The Truth is Over There

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Doug King

Statistics and link to DEFRA Final Report Updated in March 2013

Anybody who has heard me in the last two or three years will know that I regularly discuss the reality behind the headline reductions in UK carbon emissions. Official statistics for UK domestic emissions are not what they appear to be, as they don’t account for carbon emissions embedded within goods and services imported into the UK. However this week (March 2012) I was truly shocked by a new statistics release which finally discloses the magnitude of our offshore emissions.

For the last few years we in the UK (particularly our politicians) have been applauding ourselves for achieving a substantial reduction in carbon emissions. In 2009 a steep drop meant that we were emitting nearly 20% less than in 1990, the emissions baseline year. However when you break the figures down these reveal that more than half the domestic emissions reduction is due to the decline in economic activity after 2007 and a further 6% to 7% reduction occurred before 1997, the date of the Kyoto summit.

Thus a decade of policy and financial incentives have really only reduced UK domestic carbon emissions by around 3% to 4%. The vast majority of the emissions reduction was achieved due to recession and the closure of UK manufacturing industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before carbon was even on the political agenda. Since then of course we have been importing goods and services which were previously responsible for carbon emissions in the UK.

So far, old news. In March 2012 new research was published by DEFRA accounting for the carbon emissions that we have exported offshore as a result of importing services and manufactured goods. The final report on the UK’s Carbon Footprint 1993-2012, with slightly amended statistics, was published by DEFRA on 13th December 2012.

This work, by Leeds University & The Centre for Sustainability Accounting, shows that, far from reducing our overall carbon footprint, it had actually increased by around 25% (5 year average 2003-2008) before falling back sharply in 2009 as the recession bit. In 2010 emissions bounced back a little, ending 9% up on 1993 (note not the 1990 baseline year). Other statistics that I have analysed indicate a drop in domestic emissions between 1990 and 1993 of around 6%, but as the graph below indicates, whilst domestic emissions were showing an downward trend over this period, overall our footprint was rising as a result of imports. Extrapolating the figures back to 1990 indicates that the overall UK footprint might be as much as 15.9% higher than the 1990 baseline in 2010.

UK Carbon Footprint 1993-2012 (DEFRA)

However, the December 2012 final report also contains data for the overall greenhouse gas emissions in addition to the pure carbon emissions data. This shows very much the same picture, but the outcome is now a rise of around 16.5% on the 1990 baseline. It is sobering to note however the magnitude of the overall footprint. Averaged over the period, 30% of greenhouse gas emissions have come from sources other than carbon dioxide.

UK GHG Footprint 1993-2010 (DEFRA)

Sustainability is and always has been a global issue; we cannot continue to sit on our own patch of ground looking no further than our garden fence. How can we claim political supremacy in sustainability if our assessments are based on the false presumptions of carbon offsetting, trading or offshoring. The UK may be able to pat itself on the back for achieving our Kyoto target domestically, but that is meaningless when we look at our true global impact. Manipulation of figures is for accountants or economists: the only way to reduce carbon emissions is to reduce our consumption of energy and resources.

A Shot in the Foot

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Doug King

I have often bemoaned multi-headed government and its total inability to communicate between the left-hand and the right-hand, but this takes the biscuit.

In a valiant attempt to increase the uptake of small-scale renewable energy Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Greg Clark, signed into legislation on 30th August an order to extend permitted development rights for the installation of solar panels on properties in Conservation Areas and World Heritage sites. This meant that, for the first time, millions of homeowners could consider the option of installing PV from 1st December 2011.

Then, on 31st October, Greg Barker, Minister for Energy and Climate Change, without warning, announced a dramatic cut in the feed in tariff support for domestic PV effective from 12th December 2011.

At a time when solar installers’ order books are full until spring next year, government has given a large proportion of the population just 12 days to install PV and benefit from the feed in tariffs that many others have enjoyed for the last couple of years. I wonder how many cases will end up in the European Court of human rights over this issue?

By the Skin of Their Teeth

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Doug King

I’m a big fan of unintended consequences, particularly when they arise due to hasty, ill-considered carbon policy. Well, thank goodness that the coalition has woken up to the unintended consequence of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC). Now that they have revised the scheme I can talk about it freely without letting the cat out of the bag.

Prior to the Comprehensive Spending Review, the CRC would have raised money by charging large businesses for emitting carbon and used the money to reward those that cut their emissions year on year. The scheme started in April with a measurement year to establish a baseline against which future reductions would be rewarded. The blindingly obvious consequence of this is that anyone who wanted to benefit from the CRC would consume as much energy as they possibly could in the measurement year, so that they could then progressively turn their lights off and get the cash reward whilst still emitting more carbon than before the scheme was introduced (call me an old cynic!)

Fortunately, the Coalition has announced that it is now going to keep all the money raised, so the CRC has simply become a Carbon Tax. This will cost millions and has been dropped on the business community with no prior warning, so I can’t see it lasting for long, but at least there is no longer a financial incentive to emit even more carbon than business as usual.

Code for Unsustainable Homes

Posted on August 14, 2010 by Doug King

I’ve been looking at options for sustainable housing recently following a raft of competitions for housing associations who want to achieve Level 5 of the Code for Sustainable Homes. Level 5 requires zero carbon emissions from heating lighting and ventilation, so you have 2 options; install a conventional boiler and enough extra PV to offset the carbon or install a biofuel boiler. Since PV is vastly expensive, this really only leaves the biofuel boiler.

Now, we can design well insulated housing these days with peak heating loads well below 5kW. However, can you find a fully automatic woodfuel boiler below about 15kW in output? No – at these low loads the only option seems to be manually fuelled room heaters. Wood boilers really need to be fired at full power for a reasonable period to avoid problems with tarring up. In other words the smallest automatic boiler is sufficient for 3-4 homes at CSH Level 5 or 6. This is great if you are a housing association and can install common plant and distribution, but what about developing housing for private sale, or even single properties.

The Government insists that all new housing shall be CSH Level 6 by 2016. So, if you are building a single house and don’t fancy inconvenient manual fuelling, you’d be better off not insulating the house at all in order to create sufficient load for long term reliable operation of your woodfuel boiler After all, the fuel is carbon neutral so you get all the credit even if your consumption is excessive. How stupid is that?

I think that this is another example of legislators adopting a voluntary code and forcing it on the market without ever considering the implications.

No More London Please

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Doug King

Another building that has been getting quite a bit of publicity recently for all the wrong reasons is 7 More London. This new office for PriceWaterhouseCooper is the first building in the capital to be awarded a BREEAM Outstanding rating. Yet when you look at it, this conventional, air-conditioned, steel and glass monstrosity probably should not have even passed Part L of the Building Regulations. Its saviour is that elixir of apparent carbon goodness, biodiesel.

Now is it just me, or is there something fundamentally wrong about an environmental rating system that allows you to construct a building that is just as energy guzzling as all the rest, but then feed its hunger with a scarce and valuable renewable fuel source?

Biodiesel is hardly sustainable, you simply need to look into its impacts on land use and food production to understand that, but it will have a valuable role to play in maintaining essential freight transport in the future. Unless, that is, we consume it all in running un-necessary air-conditioning for poorly designed, inefficient buildings. Actually this is true of all renewable energy sources, we simply cannot generate sufficient to waste it on gratuitous consumption. Oh and by the way I’d love to know how the biodiesel is to be delivered to the building.

The impending energy crisis is likely to be so severe that we will need every drop of fuel available from what-ever source we can find, simply in order to maintain our quality of life. We certainly cannot afford to pretend to be environmentally responsible by rushing to exploit a new resource before anyone else gets there. That’s how we got into so much trouble over fossil fuels.