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.

Hooray for Capitalism

Posted on August 7, 2010 by Doug King

The recent announcement that BPs quarterly profits were down as a result of providing for the Gulf of Mexico disaster hid the fact that BP is still making huge annual profits by anybody’s standards. Following this thought I looked up some financial results for other oil companies.

The top 10 oil companies in the world, on average in 2007/2008, cleared profits of around 0.25% of world GDP! This is even when you allow some adjustment for inaccuracy in reported figures for the Chinese and Iranian state owned oil companies. If you extrapolate these figures to total world oil production and include some guesswork for coal and gas then the global profits from fossil fuels could possibly be around 1% of world GDP. Anyway it is in that sort of region.

Now in his review, Sir Nicholas Stern suggests that the ultimate cost of living with a changed climate could be 5% – 20% of world GDP, but that the cost of mitigating climate change would be of the order of 1% of world GDP. Notice any similarity between these numbers?

From my brief investigation it looks a lot like the cost of paying for remediating the climate damage done by our thirst for fossil fuels is about the same as the profit that the oil companies make from it. So the answer has been there all the time, if we had re-invested the profits from fossil fuels in cleaning up the atmosphere over the last century we might well not be in this fix. Unfortunately the profits of a global resource have not been used to benefit mankind, but have instead lined the pockets of a few – hooray for capitalism.

Hoorah For Car Scrappage

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Doug King

The news this week headlined with the end of the Government’s car scrappage scheme. The scheme was set up to prop up the motor industry, and has been very successful at doing so. However, this policy has also been justified by citing the carbon abatement potential of replacing old cars.

BIS said that over 330,000 new cars were purchased under the scheme with average carbon dioxide emissions of 133 g/km, a 27% saving over the emissions of the cars scrapped. That suggests that the average saving from the exchange is 49.2 g/km.

If each of the cars is driven 16,000 km per year then the total reduction in annual carbon dioxide emissions will be just over 260,000 tonnes. An impressive headline figure; but at what cost has this been achieved?

Each new car was subsidised to the tune of £2,000, divided equally between the taxpayer and the motor industry, at a total cost in excess of £660 million. The same investment in renewable energy would yield carbon dioxide reductions of around 3 million tonnes each year.

Furthermore, it has been estimated that more than half of the cars scrapped under the scheme would have been replaced within the next few years anyway. Lets assume that in 10 years all of the scrapped cars would have been off the road in any case. This puts the cost of carbon dioxide abatement from scrappage at over £450 per tonne, 10 times the cost per tonne of carbon capture and storage.

The scrappage scheme did succeed in protecting 4000 jobs and so achieved its primary objective (at public subsidy of £82,500 per job). So hoorah for the scrappage scheme, but it is totally unjustified to celebrate its success on the basis of carbon dioxide abatement.

Ignorance Isn’t Bliss

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Doug King

A design review this afternoon brought home just how critical the low carbon knowledge gap really is. Two architects presented schemes for projects with high sustainability ambitions. Both were labouring under misapprehensions about daylight and natural ventilation because both had been advised by their engineers that everything would be fine. Unfortunately neither architect had sufficient knowledge to challenge their engineers’ assertions.

It transpired that the ventilation would be fine because the engineers, in both cases, were planning to add fans, so the systems would work when natural ventilation failed. A quick examination of the buildings in question revealed these fans would have to be relied on for ventilation about 95% of the time – hardly natural ventilation.

The daylight issues were also similar; deep plan buildings with fully glazed facades in compensation to let enough light in! Once again, an engineer had calculated the average daylight factor and assured the architect that everything would be OK. I estimated that the light would vary by about 60:1. With such high contrast the interiors will appear deeply gloomy against the over-lit perimeters and result in excessive use of electric light.

Neither building was engineered to achieve the architectural ambition. Both displayed classic mistakes which we teach architectural students to avoid. However, a practicing architect has to deal with many conflicting issues and must be able to rely on their engineer. Yet, engineers are taught to design with fans and electric lights, not to manipulate the building form to promote natural airflow and light.

How many buildings fail by falling between architects and engineers who lack a common language? We must not only join up architectural and engineering education, but we must do it urgently.

Speed Kills

Posted on March 15, 2010 by Doug King

A roadside information sign exhorting me to slow down because ‘Speed Kills’ made me think today about how we communicate issues that perhaps people don’t want to confront, such as climate change and peak oil. We see exhortations such as this all the time, yet they don’t seem to be affecting people’s behaviour. Maybe this is because the message isn’t just wrong, it is patently so: speed evidently does not kill. There have been no recorded cases of motorists suddenly expiring as they pass the speed limit. No, it is suddenly stopping that kills most motorists.

I think it is the same with peak oil. It’s no use telling people to reduce their energy consumption, which they’re quite comfortable with, because of a possible future problem. It isn’t the present condition, but the change, that’s going to knobble us. The issue is that it will be so much worse if we don’t start preparing for the inevitable now. Like speeding in a car, it’s not the present rate of economic progress that is the problem, but what will happen when that progress is suddenly halted and we hadn’t prepared for it by slowing down.

When we are communicating messages about future risks we must avoid over-simplification and blatant fallacies or we will just be totally ignored.

I’m going to think about this and write more when I have made some connections.