This is good look upon UK energy utilisation over the decades and clearly shows industry usage declined decades ago:https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
I would also factor in efficiency usage of appliances and house insulation etc playing into that 20% factor more than most. Dare say lighting has seen a big reduction in electricity usage in that period due to LED's.
> It would be great if UK wind power would be so abundant and cheap, it flooded the entire EU with cheap clean electricity.
Looking at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_European_Uni... The UK seems to be above average in wind electrical production.
As for this flood of cheap and abundant electricity it produces, given https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... and what I know of how such large wind farms are financed. It does seem to be a common theme that wind production installation costs are subsidised by a level upon consumer energy costs. So with most wind energy production being cheap, at a level well removed from the consumer - yes, though at the consumer level - not so much as they are subsidising this transition drive.
Not saying it is a bad thing, but the whole cheap and abundant aspect at a consumer level, does seem somewhat removed unless you have a large property with a wind turbine yourself getting a nice feed in tariff that is subsidised by everybody else to incentive green energy production.
But the shift from coal is a good thing, though one area that I feel gets overlooked would be ships that use brown coal and the emissions they produce.
There's a chart somewhere that quantifies the savings due to increased household efficiency
We switched to LED for all the lights in the house, and noticed a reduction in our electricity costs
"Deindustrialisation" is a meme, but people should be specific about what industries they think went and when; much of it happened in the 1980s, not the 2010s.
However, the decision to wreck the last of the mass car industry with Brexit isn't going to help.
There's some discussion ATM about converting Tata in Port Talbot to electric furnaces