UK becomes first G20 country to halve its carbon emissions | Hacker News Reader

UK becomes first G20 country to halve its carbon emissions

spectator.co.uk

214 pointsbeejiu282 comments

As noted in another comment, some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere and the UK becoming more of a service economy.

Though there are indicators like emissions per kWh of electricity generated that show promise. https://grid.iamkate.com/ ... over the past 10 years the value has went from 475g of CO2 per kWh to ~153g. A contentious part of that value no doubt is that biomass imported from North America is considered carbon neutral. Add in the complications of new growth vs old growth, transportation and the time-sensitive nature of man-made climate change it can perhaps be seen as less advantageous as figures may suggest.

All the same I'm optimistic, particularly in Scotland where a disproportionate amount of green electricity is harvested by population. Our National Grid is playing catch up trying to accommodate intermittent sources and price accordingly.

Biomass is a small impact. The next big impact will be ever increasing wind power and the shift from gas to electric for heating.

Drax which burns biomass is self-styled as "the UK's largest renewable power station"

Right now it’s generating less power than Solar - in the depth of winter, 8%

Gas is 50% higher at 12% and that doesn’t include the gas usage in keeping homes warm

Wind (32%) imports and nuclear are all higher than gas for the electricity generation, let alone imported wood generation.

It's not ideal to compare at any point in time. It's a clear day (and midday), not long after a storm has passed generating record levels of wind energy - during a national holiday when demand is always low (and prices often go into negative territory)

I'm not disagreeing what'll be the next impact, just saying Drax and biomass is perhaps worth more than the statement of it being 'small impact'.

In 2022 biomass was 5%

https://www.edie.net/what-did-the-uks-electricity-generation...

It is worth bearing in mind that it can be seen as stored energy that can be used at any point in time, unlike wind and solar.

In other words, 5% as an average means it's far higher during periods lacking light and wind.

Solar is down as 4.4%, though in peak Summer during the day it can satisfy about a 1/4 of demand, cheaply.

It’s not clear if solar includes reduced demand from rooftop solar, or just grid connected solar

Either way 5% is a tiny amount.

biomass is also far better than gas for those times when you do need to boost supply, so increasing biomass still seems like a win.

agreed. It can seem counter-intuitive with biomass since it's "burning trees", but generally it's a carbon neutral process or far closer to one than burning buried fossil fuels.

Drax is huge, and now burns canadian imported wood rather than coal which is was built for because it can be considered carbon-free.

Farmed wood should actually be considered carbon neutral. Other than transportation cost and the carbon emitted during harvesting, it’s a legitimate way of capturing carbon from the atmosphere and then just emitting the same carbon back

The problem is that at this point we need to be actually capturing carbon and not re-emitting it.

Capturing carbon is literally a fantasy. Other than growing forests there is no hope we can invent a technological way out of our carbon emissions by capturing them. Companies which promise otherwise are essentially a scam.

And growing forests is a viable option but the problem is that the carbon is only captured for as long as you don't burn the wood or let it rot, it has to be either buried or turned into things which ultimately won't release their CO2 back into the air.

If we can increase our CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere we can become carbon neutral faster as increased concentrations drive forest growth and allow plants to grow in previously desert regions.

Grow a forest, convert the wood into charcoal, then store it in a salt mine.

Converting to charcoal is pointless, just burry biomass which is how we got fossil fuels in the first place.

A dump beats every commonly proposed method of carbon sequestration because people pay you to take it and all you need to do is prevent that carbon from entering the atmosphere.

Farmed wood shouldn’t be considered carbon neutral as there’s transportation and other factors to include

Plus we should avoid burning captured carbon

> Our National Grid is playing catch up

Nah - they're thinking of playing catch-up in 5-10 years time when they've done the paperwork to get permission to start catching up...

> As noted in another comment, some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere

This is an excellent point. Are there reports similar to TFA that accounts for this? I mean a report that calculates the total demand a country is putting on carbon emissions (directly or indirectly) will be more insightful.

I note that the article mentions that the peak was in 1970, perhaps earlier than most countries.

I think that this may be linked to North Sea gas and conversion from coal to natural gas. And also the decimation of industry that occurred during the 70s and 80s.

Indeed, great points.

Generally these articles use 1990 as a frame of reference. To be fair based on the initial graph shown alone, the UK has almost reached 50% of 1990 values also, though perhaps other countries have already achieved 50% of 1970 values.

There’s a real problem of transparency and opacity of actual numbers when it comes to contribution to global warming, diseases, and other issues at scale. It’s a shame and it’s not clear how we can do better without some real technological breakthrough in measurement

Maybe just measure CO2 in the atmosphere? And maybe put international pressure on the largest emitters? (China and India)

China is where Walmart gets their cheap crap (and Apple their iPhones ), tax the CO2 and the people shopping at Walmart get mad that everything's more expensive. Slash, the manufacturers look for other countries where maybe the CO2 expulsion is under the limit, or the reporting isn't that robust... Because hey if they're not competitive price-wise, the customers look elsewhere for their cheap crap...

je vous presente https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Border_Adjustment_Mecha...

Ah yes, clearly it's only those people shopping at Walmart that would not be happy about price increases. More than that, it's only that cheap crap that they buy that would get more expensive. Enlightened people like you will just stand above it and buy nothing but organic, locally sourced crap!

With a high carbon footprint due to the price local labour is paid and the amount of stuff they purchase. When you buy from China and India you know people are only getting paid enough to just buy food and a small place to live, drastically reducing their carbon footprint.

Nah, I also like my products as cheap as possible. As do you (if I can guess). Hey, aren't we all good members of this capitalistic system?

Sadly the masses will vote for their near-term interest and not to avoid +3 degree C catastrophe they haven't paid attention about, which is anyway "many many years in the future".

That's measured already since the 60s. You never see any reference to it because what it shows is a constant rate of increase that is entirely unaffected by literally anything you can think of. Rise of China? No impact. Lockdowns and the global air travel shutdown? No impact. Renewables revolution? Invisible. Great recession? Of course not. And all the international conferences and agreements.... well, you get the picture.

This fact is discouraging which is why the media and government enforce a blanket silence about it. Along with many other aspects of climate science.

I wonder if it's a similar effect like after the German reunification, but caused by Brexit instead? Total emissions for Germany as a whole dropped by around 35% during the 90's because the non-competitive East German industry was essentially shut down overnight. 35% emission drop looks great in headlines, but only if one ignores the economic side effects (of turning the lives of 16 million people upside down).

PS: looking at the graph the sharp downward turn already started in 2006, so probably not Brexit...

It really started with the "dash to gas" [1] in the nineties. We had gone through some painful labor disputes in the coal industry which the government was keen to avoid. Alongside that the generating industry was privatised. This encouraged a lot of investment in gas. Also we were getting a ton of grief from Norway about all the acid rain from sulphur which had to be dealt with [2].

The Tory government which has been in power since 2010 was somewhat sceptical about wind power and shut down new onshore development when they came in. Fortunately their coalition partner negotiated the continued development of offshore which has been huge since then.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_for_Gas

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain

Hi, sorry but how can the Tories have coalition partners? The UK has 3 major parties and the other 2 are generally the coalition, right? I'm not too familiar with UK politics.

Really two major parties. In 2010 neither of those parties gained enough seats in parliament to gain a majority so they formed a coalition with one of the minor parties which tipped the scales in their direction.

The system is somewhat archaic and well overdue reform but neither of the major parties wants that for obvious reasons.

> As noted in another comment, some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere and the UK becoming more of a service economy.

This would be an interesting metric... instead of carbon emissions being calculated by the location of "chimneys", a better metric would be a total carbon emissions by all consumpton of the country. Sure, EVs are clean if you buy them in (eg.) UK, but all the polution is done elsewhere, from the dirty lithium production and dirty rare earths production, energy intensive metalworks, etc., but the car is still bought and used in UK, and the UK consumer is the cause for those emissions.

Also many even local policies don't take that in effect, because many things where we 'force' users into 'greener alternatives' are not so green if you count the manufacture (which is done elsewhere, and again, noone cares about that). In many cases, extending the life of a device (car, appliance,...), even with bad energy usage and/or emissions is still greener (looked globally) than buying a new appliance/car and disposing of the old. Sure,the new small EV is "green", but driving your old VW golf for 5 more years could have been greener (again, depends on the distance driven, etc.).

>>the UK consumer is the cause for those emissions.

Sure, but counting it as UK emissions would mean you count it twice, no? If other countries that mine lithium report their own CO2 emissions then if you add the CO2 cost of using electronics made with lithium and used in UK to UK's CO2 emission, that means you have counted the same emissions twice,no?

If you are trying to total all CO2 admissions? Yes.

If you're trying to determine which countries have the biggest impact it could be a valuable metric.

It needs to be done at planet level, otherwise it's emission shifting, not reduction. Moving it from one place to another on the same planet doesn't reduce emissions.

While there's a lot of nuance to this: in carbon accounting it is standard practice to account for the same emission more than once. Carbon inventories are broken out into three different scopes, the first two scopes concern fuel and electricity generation emissions, and the third scope includes everything in your value chain (both upstream and downstream). Therefore the country producing the EV battery would report on the emission in their Scope 1 and Scope 2 inventory, and the country utilising that EV battery would report it within their Scope 3 inventory.

It may seem odd to double account, but the goal of carbon accounting is not to ascribe blame to an emission (since ascribing blame is a never-ending game of finger pointing), it is to make every business/consumer responsible. The country creating the emission needs to be incentivised to decarbonise, and the country consuming that emission needs to be incentivised to decarbonise their full - including international - supply chains.

Ah - that's really interesting, didn't know this. But that means that UK should already be counting CO2 emissions of products sold there(where known), right?

Yes, this is where the *nuance* mentioned at the start of my reply comes in.

It *should* include all scopes, including upstream emissions from purchased goods and services from abroad. But in many countries their country-level carbon inventories still have huge gaps.

UK Legislation implements the GHG Protocol scope system in the UK's carbon accounting regulations that businesses must follow for reporting their emissions (e.g. SECR), and government guidance for calculating emissions all follow the scope system too (e.g. BEIS Conversion Factors guidance). So it is very disappointing if the UK's carbon accounts has got gaps (but I wouldn't be surprised).

> It may seem odd to double account, but the goal of carbon accounting is not to ascribe blame to an emission

It's definitely how it is used by activists / NGO etc tho [1].

Another strange practice is to scale the CO2 production with the price of goods. Eg: it is assumed that you produce 10x more CO2 when you buy a $100 bottle of wine than if you buy a $10 bottle of wine. This makes no sense at all from an environmental perspective, but the conclusion you can draw from this are aligned with the political views of the people producing those reports.

1: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/top-5-ways-bill...

Sure, for example I had accounting done as part of a study which also fitted meters (which I wanted anyway) and read the data (which I would likely have freely agreed to but obviously does need formal permission) and their baseline basically go well, about 60% of your income isn't accounted for in these days so we assume you turned that money into carbon emissions at our default rate. Actually the money was just sat in a bank account, which AFAIK doesn't cause net carbon emissions.

For individuals I don't think this approach works very well, but over a population I can believe it comes out in the wash.

> Actually the money was just sat in a bank account, which AFAIK doesn't cause net carbon emissions.

That depends on your definitions. I'm not sure about U.K. reserve ratios, but in the U.S., about 90% of your bank deposit goes back out as loans that hopefully increase economic activity. The majority of that activity probably isn't carbon-neutral.

Neither the UK nor the US have a reserve requirement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_requirement

In addition, banks in modern times have never had to wait for deposits to extend loans.

How did I miss the reserve requirement in the US going to zero in 2020? I was living overseas at the time, and I know I had more pressing things to consider, but still...

> In addition, banks in modern times have never had to wait for deposits to extend loans.

Are you referring to the discount window, the repo market, and interbank lending, or the fact that reserve requirements are typically averaged over a couple of weeks? In these cases, (as long as there's a reserve requirement), a person adding to a bank does still enable more lending, no? Or, are you saying that in modern times, even with non-zero reserve requirements, commercial banks usually operate with excess reserves, so reserves are not the limiting factor on lending?

This is what I read from the Bank of England:

> The reality of how money is created today differs from the description found in some economics textbooks

> Rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending creates deposits.

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...

Specifically, in my case, that bank is (mostly) NS&I, one of several banks owned by the British government.

NS&I doesn't write loans, nor does it have a big vault full of cash somewhere, instead my money is "invested" in running the country I live in. Rather than borrowing money from international money markets by writing gilts (bonds payable by the government) they borrow my money and pay me interest.

As a result, nothing changes, all the same things were going to happen anyway, just they'd have borrowed from the Chinese, or the Americans or whoever was buying gilts.

On the 1x vs. 10x point, I believe the unit quantity is derived by finding the manufacturing costs (in CO2) for a given process and then extrapolating. No one is counting the grams of CO2 of your cheeseburger. They're counting the CO2 of the whole farm.

They do the same double accounting for green credits. If a country produce green energy it get accounted there. If they then sell that energy it get accounted a second time by the country who buys it. The exporter (possible a separate company from the producer) can even account it a second time, as can the consumer in the end.

Basically every time green energy has changed hand there are two new credits being created, and with a international energy market there is a lot of opportunities for energy to change ownership.

Ironically you have written "twice, no?" twice.

The search term you’re looking for is “consumption based emissions”. There the uk in 2021 was down >30% from its peak, though the number for this year may be lower. Example: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-emissions...

46% of 'British Peoples' carbon emissions are released overseas (2016)

https://www.wwf.org.uk/sites/default/files/2020-04/FINAL-WWF...

> In 2016, 54% of the UK’s carbon footprint was domestically sourced with the remaining 46% coming from emissions released overseas to satisfy UK consumption. The overseas proportion of the UK’s carbon footprint increased substantially – from just 14% in 1990 – thus reducing the scope of UK climate policy to affect emissions associated with consumption.

> if you count the manufacture (which is done elsewhere, and again, noone cares about that)

Please stop feeding that myth. There is a lot of anti-green propaganda built on it. The area of research is called lifecycle analysis and is one of the most heavily studied recently, precisely because we need facts to base an energy transition on. There is plenty of published and reviewed research.

Trade adjusted emissions are also down. The percentage due to trade has increased over time: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-co2-embedded-in-tra...

Note: 1. the US hasn’t seen such a big change so this thinking doesn’t really carry over to there.

2. The chart is a percentage of domestic production so decreasing domestic production while holding emissions due to trade constant would make the line go up.

> As noted in another comment, some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere and the UK becoming more of a service economy.

Consumption-based emissions are also down for the UK from a peak of 750 Mt down to 500 Mt:

* https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

33% is still pretty good.

Britain has been one of the highest trading nations in the world for centuries. That's what their colonies were for.

So I don't think it's as simple as British manufacturing all having moved overseas. A lot of British consumption was being manufactured overseas even before the last few decades.

It's entirely possible that this is because of that, but I don't think one should be so quick to jump to that conclusion specifically for a country that is famous almost entirely for their "Empire".

British manufacturing is still in decline, e.g. Bloomberg published a graph yesterday showing how the British car industry output shrunk by half since Brexit in 2016.

Brexit didn't happen in 2016, just the vote to begin the process, so the fact that Bloomberg are making this claim is misleading. Additionally when Brexit actually did get implemented it's had no effect on trade, in fact trade with the EU is up slightly. But that's all expected for anything to do with the UK in the media these days. They will keep lying and manipulating people on this topic forever.

You don't need a final legislative change to impact inward investment and manufacturing location when everyone knows it's coming. The Brexit vote hit investment confidence and manufacturing long before the final withdrawal agreement because the writing was on the wall and manufacturers avoid risk.

"No effect on trade" is definitely not true, I've personally had multiple exporting clients go bust due to trade restrictions and even if their volume of trade is exactly replaced, the balance and make up of trade is different (it isn't just that, however).

No it didn't. The economy was growing at the time of the vote and continued to grow after it, a bit faster even. Unemployment hit record lows.

You may be thinking of the predictions of the remain campaign which very heavily featured the idea that even the vote itself, without any actual legal changes, would trigger a recession due to "uncertainty". But that was wrong, it never happened.

Check the trade stats for yourself. Trade is down but that's because of the huge damage of lockdowns and other terrible policies. Brexit would show up as a reduction in trade with the EU faster than elsewhere, but that didn't happen, the proportion remained about the same. This data comes from the government itself. Seeing any Brexit effect in the recorded data just isn't possible.

That's surprising given that even most leave campaigners accepted that there would be some impact, no but in the end it seems the single market was basically a mirage. It never did much for services which is the bulk of the UK economy.

Again, if you don't believe me, check the data for yourself.

This report from the UK Parliament, says otherwise: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

The report admits that the trade was affected by Brexit and other factors and it's difficult to separate one cause from the other. The report also notes that the way data is tracked and compiled changed since Brexit.

The trade with the EU in pounds was highest in 2022, and lower in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2019. The report says it's not adjusted to inflation. In terms of % of the total trade, it's the lowest ever in 2022.

It says the same thing I just said. Did you read the report or just the summary? The summary looks like some civil service bias, as it doesn't actually state the most important facts to know clearly. But the report itself does make it clear.

Look at the actual PDF, in particular the graph on page 12 (JIM7/JIM8). This is inflation adjusted goods trade. As you can see Brexit has had no impact whatsoever. Inflation adjusted goods imports are about where they were in 2018. Inflation adjusted exports are about where they were in Jan 2020.

There was a very brief drop in both when the new controls came in. The disruption lasted only a period of months before trade resumed as before.

In other words, there's nothing to see here. This is the opposite of what was stated as 100% certainty by supposed economic experts. Anyone who said before the vote that leaving wouldn't have bad economic consequences was roundly shat upon as a expertise-denying dolt. Yet they were correct.

In terms of % of the total trade, it's the lowest ever in 2022.

The report states clearly: "The proportion of the UK’s total exports going to the EU has generally been declining gradually over the last 15-20 years". It's due to the rise of China/India as more important trading partners, so that would be expected even if the UK had stayed in.

Now look at the graph on page 15. It shows a smooth long term decline in the EU's importance as a trading partner. In particular there was no drop in relative exports to the EU after Brexit, again, despite clear promises that it'd have a huge effect.

What we can see from the report you cited is two things:

1. What I said is correct. Brexit has had no impact on trade. This shows up clearly when using inflation adjusted statistics - it's all a continuation of prior long term trends. Therefore by implication, EU membership was useless for the economy and the entire basis of the Remain campaign was therefore a lie (but did they realize that?!)

2. It's very easy to be misled by Remain bias in the establishment. The summary for "statistics on EU-UK trade" doesn't mention the lack of Brexit impact anywhere despite it being the most important result by far, with the result that you thought you were contradicting me without doing so.

Feel free to omit the "Brexit" word from my comment and just consider it saying "auto manufacturing lost 50% of the output since 2016", I have zero doubts it was declining before that year too.

Mmm, you should have doubts about that. Between 2010 and 2016 car production was growing, not in decline.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/car-production

Then it turned around and entered a period of decline until 2021, when it started growing again.

The big impacts on UK auto production since 2000 have been the GFC, lockdowns and then the semiconductor supply crisis caused by the lockdowns (in 2021).

It may be worth reflecting on why you were so 100% sure about it being in decline before 2016. Where did you get that impression? Probably places like Bloomberg, whose goal is to create ideological converts, not inform.

I assumed that the colonies were there to provide the raw materials which were shipped to British factories. The finished goods were then exported to the colonies and other countries.

There’s a Chinese saying, that if you apply weights and measures people will use the weights and measures to cheat and steal.

This time we stop measuring emissions and just focus on reducing emissions. And that would mean reducing consumption.

I'm as much of an anti-Taylorist as anyone, but how do you even know whether emissions are reduced without measurement?

Reducing "consumption" (of what? measured how?) is probably impossible in a democratic economy - that's known as a recession and tends to cause a change of party.

We have a seal what increases emissions: driving, flying, buying things, heating, cooling,… I mean, it’s pretty obvious.

Focusing on those, rather than trying to quantify, the emissions, released, is much easier. It’s much easier for me to know how much I buy then to try to find out how much admissions are omitted between the things I buy.

For example, trying to figure out the emissions created by buying a Tesla for a high mileage, gas powered car. What really matters most? The best answer is buying neither of them. Second best sensor is buying and driving it much less, those both matter more than how much admissions are created by the creation or use these vehicles.

They still arguing about how much emissions are caused by elect versus high-efficiency, gas, powered vehicles. In fact, we have something that easily quantifiable versus something that’s almost unquantifiable.

We all just need to do a lot less. But that’s why people focus on emissions and not use, because it’s the thing they don’t want to hear.

“We just need to do less”

“But that’s called a recession. It won’t happen”

“WE JUST NEED TO DO LESS”

For better or worse, in a democracy anyone who tells the populace to scale back their lifestyle will not get elected. “We need to do less” is not a solution. It’s wishful thinking.

What other solutions are there? Make our current lifestyle less carbon-intensive over time. Yeah it’s not as good as perfect collective action, but it has the advantage of actually being possible.

> some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere and the UK becoming more of a service economy.

Worth remembering the UK still manufactures more than France, and had a comparable amount of manufacturing as a percentage of GDP as other Western countries.

Reading the comments, it seems that absolutely no one is happy about this. It is either a lie, insufficient or a pointless response to a non-problem.

But it’s a clear achievement. An achievement with lots of nuance. And one that runs counter to many strongly held and arguably ideological positions on all sides of the political spectrum.

Reading responses to it here and on Twitter has been rather depressing.

Like it or not (and I don't like it), that is the culture of this website. Positive comments are actively discouraged, and even if you want to make one they are difficult to write. To criticize you only need to find one thing wrong, but to substantively support you really need to understand the whole subject.

In my opinion, there has also been an eternal summer effect following the reddit protests, which manifests as 1) more anti-curious doomerism and joke comments

I feel the pandemic also changed the tone on here, though the Reddit protest definetly made things worse on here.

I guarantee you if that was USA the comments would be much more positive. HN is as biased and indoctrinated as Reddit simply because Americans are the largest group of commenters here

It's not helped that the messenger is a highly polarising source that piggybacks on the facts to a) attack the mainstream media as unpatriotic liars and b) downplay the severity of climate change that they've been actively denying, because of the success of policies they've actively fought against at every turn.

Don’t shoot the message.

The Spectator often makes valuable points that are hard to accept but true. One of them is that British climate efforts are pointless, it accounts for such a tiny percentage of world emissions that it could drop to zero and be a rounding error. Therefore the "success" of this policy is a mirage. Yes the UK had reduced emissions. No it won't have any effect on the climate. Both these things can be true simultaneously: the policy succeeded and failed.

No, it's cynical sophistry aka bullshit.

Meanwhile, The Spectator has employed some of the worst climate deniers in british journalism, who specialize in the production of exactly that commodity.

https://www.desmog.com/james-delingpole/

> James Delingpole announced in The Spectator that he was going to “put his money where his mouth is” and invest in a fund named Cool Futures with the aim of short-selling renewable energy stocks. Delingpole describes climate change as an “outrageous scam” and says he will bet “on the Big Short principle” and call “this rigged market’s bluff.”

...

In June 2016, Joanne Nova finally published about the new fund on her own blog, asking readers to donate money to get the Cayman Island-based hedge fund started. The Cool Futures Fund Management needs at least $375,000 to get off the ground, of which it has already raised $42,530, reported Daily Kos

https://www.desmog.com/ross-clark/

> In a Spectator article titled “The true cost of renewable energy”, Clark wrote that “the price of green energy is a form of terrible segregation, where the rich will have access to light and heat, and those who need it most, the poor, will shiver in the dark”.3

https://www.desmog.com/toby-young/

> Young criticised the youth climate strike movement in a Spectator column where he claimed the protestors just wanted “a day off school”. He wrote that Greta Thunberg had been “living on another planet for the past 16 years” and concluded the article by writing: [25]

“If children really must wag their fingers at older generations for some imaginary sin, I wish they’d do it at the weekend. Better yet, they could combine it with picking up litter, which really might do something for the environment. The fact that so many students have been taken in by Greta Thunberg’s crude propaganda is an argument for raising the voting age to 21, not lowering it to 16

The first is someone who is disagreeing with you and actually putting their money where their mouth is, which is the opposite of sophistry. You don't argue with any specific claim of his so it's impossible to know what you think is bullshit there.

The second is a good example of what I just said - hard to accept but true. If the price of energy goes up a lot then the poorest will do without, and the richest will just outbid them. He wrote that article in November 2022. A few months later the Guardian was writing that millions can't afford to heat their own homes due to high energy prices:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/08/uk-weather-m...

The third is a guy who doesn't like Greta Thunberg, the girl famous for most recently arguing that Palestine has something to do with climate change. Are you saying that anyone who thinks Thunberg is an idiot is engaged in "cynical sophistry"?

When UK exported its industry to China and imports the stuff it needs from China then yeah the CO2 emitted in UK halfed. When you add the CO2 emissions happing in China which are related to UK consumption then the number wont be impressive at all.

Can you write down what you think the number would be?

> When you add the CO2 emissions happing in China which are related to UK consumption then the number wont be impressive at all.

Consumption-based emissions are also down for the UK from a peak of 750 Mt down to 500 Mt:

* https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

33% is still pretty good.

While a little orthogonal to this, Tom Scott's latest video [1] with him climbing a power transmission tower concludes with discussion as to how the generating sources have gradually been moving from the centre of the country, away from coal mine fuelled generators to nuclear, gas and wind generation near the coast.

[1] https://youtu.be/F0JDK_71yDg?si=XkJZBFH4nVR0GBTV

It was interesting to visit Battersea Power Station in London...which is now a mall.

London's fossil fuel power stations hadn't actually produced power for decades. Their redevelopment (as the Tate Modern art gallery in Bankside, and as a mixed development with a mall in Battersea, not to mention housing developments in several more sites) is more recent, but I think they were all shut in the 1980s or earlier.

No mention of France, who have lower emissions.

They just never went up as much, because they converted to nuclear much earlier.

France is currently reducing the share of nuclear in favor of renewable energy. They don’t plan to build enough new reactors to even replace what they currently have and electricity demand will increase a lot in the future as transportation, heating and industry are switched away from fossil fuels.

This was the plan a couple of years ago.

Didn't work out, so it is no longer the plan.

They are still investing somewhat in renewables, mostly off-shore wind, but the focus has shifted back to nuclear expansion.

Oh yeah? How many new reactors are they planning to build in the next twenty years? How many reach EOL in that time?

Oh yeah? Oh yeah!

6 initially, 8 more after that. And they will extend the life of their existing fleet.

"Macron calls for nuclear 'renaissance' to end the France's reliance on fossil fuels"

https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/11/macron-calls-for-n...

"At COP28, Countries Launch Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy Capacity by 2050, Recognizing the Key Role of Nuclear Energy in Reaching Net Zero"

https://www.energy.gov/articles/cop28-countries-launch-decla...

Political grandstanding in the face of reality.

> Schneider: Most of them are countries that are already operating nuclear power plants and have their own interest in trying to drag money support, most of which by the way would go into their current fleets. Take EDF [France’s state-owned utility company], for example. Through the French government, EDF is lobbying like mad to get support from the European Union—European taxpayers’ money—for its current fleet. It’s not even for new construction, because the French know that they won’t do much until 2040 anyway. There is also another aspect that is related and that illustrates how this pledge is completely, utterly unrealistic.

> The pledge to triple nuclear energy capacity is not to be discussed first in terms of pros or cons, but from the point of view of feasibility. And from this point of view, just looking at the numbers, it’s impossible. We are talking about a target date of 2050, which is 27 years from now. In terms of nuclear development, that’s tomorrow morning. If we look at what happened in the industry over the past 20 years since 2003, there have been 103 new nuclear reactors starting operation. But there have been also 110 that closed operation up until mid 2023. Overall, it’s a slightly negative balance. It’s not even positive. Now if you consider the fact that 50 of those new reactors that were connected to the grid were in China alone and that China closed none, the world outside China experienced a negative balance of 57 reactors over the past 20 years.

https://thebulletin.org/2023/12/nuclear-expert-mycle-schneid...

Meanwhile China is barely building nuclear anymore. China added more wind and solar the past nine months than all of its nuclear reactors under construction will provide. Yes, that includes capacity factor.

https://twitter.com/yo_ean/status/1718633487454904718

Yeah, "anti nuclear advocate Mycle Schneider pooh poohs most recent move towards more nuclear" probably isn't the grand revelation you make it out to be.

The fact that most of the world under-invested in nuclear the last two decades or so is well-known. Extrapolating past trends linearly into the future is ... unwise.

Particularly when there has been a significant policy shift, not in small part due to the disaster of the German "Energiewende".

The Tragedy of Germany’s Energy Experiment

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/opinion/nuclear-power-ger...

Germany’s Energiewende: A Disaster In The Making

https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/germanys-energiewende-a...

Germany’s Energy Disaster 20 Years Later

https://www.americanexperiment.org/germanys-energy-disaster-...

Germany’s Energy Crisis Dispels Several Myths

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2022/08/31/germany...

"Much of its problem is self-inflicted and demonstrates the perils of populist but irrational energy policy."

As for China:

"As of February 2023, China has 55 plants with 57GW in operation, 22 under construction with 24 GW and more than 70 planned with 88GW. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

That is almost a tripling in both numbers and capacity. Because you need some reliable power.

France has nearly sixty reactors that all need to be replaced in the next thirty years…

Part of the "nuclear renaissance" is extending the life of the current fleet.

Which costs a lot of money. Which is also needed to build new ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_renaissance

"Since about 2001 the term nuclear renaissance has been used to refer to a possible nuclear power industry revival, driven by rising fossil fuel prices and new concerns about meeting greenhouse gas emission limits."

Just like today.

Since 2001 and now, mostly nothing happened which could be seen as an "nuclear renaissance" in France. Other than the EPR having extreme cost increases and extreme construction times.

Why should the "nuclear renaissance" happen, this time? Given that the situation is only worse: engineers are aging, plants are aging, current nuclear technology/companies are not delivering, money is tight, ...

> Why should the "nuclear renaissance" happen, this time?

Dunno...maybe because, as the article you cite mentions, the term was used in 2001 to refer to a hypothetical.

" ... a nuclear renaissance is possible ... "

So there was no "that time". Whereas "this time" it is not some hypothetical that could happen, but officially declared government policy.

Macron presents France’s long-term ‘nuclear-heavy’ energy plan

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/macron-presents...

Macron announces ‘nuclear renaissance’ — and papers over past mishaps

https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-papers-nucle...

Macron pushes 'French nuclear renaissance'

https://www.dw.com/en/macron-calls-for-french-nuclear-renais...

Did I write "declared" government policy? My bad: declared and enacted government policy:

French Parliament passes law to accelerate construction of new nuclear reactors

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2023/05/17/french-...

French parliament votes nuclear plan with large majority

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-parliament-votes...

Note the "large majority". To be precise it was "approved with 402 votes in favour and 130 against." That's a whopping 75% of the vote. Doesn't seem particularly controversial.

France's Assemblée Nationale adopts 'nuclear acceleration' bill on first reading

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/03/21/france-s...

So that's what's different. Hypothetical possibility vs. declared and enacted government policy.

You're welcome.

It's an all-government show now. EDF had earlier this year 64.5 Billion Euro debt. It sells electricity to the consumer, operates the grid, operates the power plants, build the power plants. Their mismanagement is amplified by the lack of competition. It hides the large losses of the electricity sector. Now they also pay for the "favor" to construct a nuclear power plant in the UK, where they carry the rising losses, which the Chinese now are refusing to pay. They would need to increase the electricity price to be profitable, but that's impossible, just in case the politicians want to be reelected -> debt goes to the taxpayer. I wonder how the finance all this debt? French debt is now at > 3000 billion Euro. 115 % debt/gdp.

It's a mostly state owned monopoly on electricity. It's not a market-oriented energy landscape at all. Energy socialism.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/opinion/...

> declared and enacted government policy

Delivery is the problem. See the main tasks of a) keeping the aging and outdated reactors online, b) building new plants, c) developing new types of plants, d) innovating and e) financing the whole show with government money.

They are so desperate, such that EDF is still cooperating with Rosatom/Russia...

I love it how you don’t even bat an eyelid when one of your outlandish claims turns out to be made up out of thin air…and just move on to the next one.

A wonderful Gish Gallop..

I love how you go on, having exposed that you even don't know the difference between a powerplant and a reactor. All the while you claim others to be 'comically incorrect'. You should really tone down and don't say that anti-nuclear people are clueless, while you are yourself demonstrating a lot of ignorance.

Good grief.

In common usage, the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, particularly in Germany where plants often consist of a single reactor. But yeah, that bit of terminological sloppiness is a total game changer...about what exactly?

Pretty much all your claims are, in fact, comically incorrect:

1. nuclear is too expensive.

It is not. It is clearly and obviously cheaper than renewables. See France v. Germany electricity prices.

Taking the most expensive outlier in cost and claiming that to be the norm is comically incorrect. Well, if you assume an honest mistake, which admittedly is difficult with that level of wrong. So OK: not comically incorrect, just plain old dishonest.

2. nuclear is unsafe

It is not. It is either among the safest or the safest form of energy production we have.

3. nuclear takes too long

It does not. Average time to build is 7.5 years, consistently. France converted their electricity production to nuclear in 20 years, Germany hasn't managed half of that in 20 years with renewables.

Again, focusing on a few outliers that take a very long time and claiming that to be the norm is comically incorrect. Or just dishonest see above.

4. nuclear is on the way out

There is a massive expansion going on. It was on the way out a few years back, but the catastrophe that is the German Energiewende made non-ideologically captured countries realize they need reliable grid-level supply. Russian gas backup isn't it.

But you obviously know better than those countries as to what they are actually doing.

Again, either comically incorrect or dishonest.

5. nuclear waste storage is unsolved

Do tell the countries that have built long-term storage that they haven't. And tell the facilities that are doing the intermediate storage just fine that it isn't working.

This one I wouldn't classify as just plain old incorrect, not comically so, as it is somewhat tricky to navigate through all the misinformation and find out what's going on.

> particularly in Germany where plants often consist of a single reactor

We were arguing about nuclear power in Japan. In 2011 Fukushima had one of the largest plants in the world, with six reactors. Many powerplants in Japan had more than one reactor. But you did not know that?

You also never seemed to have heard of the events at the other reactors, like the four ones in Daini.

Your list reads like that one of a fanboy, it has very little to do with reality.

> We were arguing about nuclear power in Japan.

Incorrect. The article was about UK, this subthread was all about France.

> Your list reads like that one of a fanboy,

It reads like a "fanboy" to you.

"I know you're a pessimist if you think I am an optimist"

Might be time to re-examine your biases and bring them into alignment with reality, because...

> it has very little to do with reality.

Incorrect. Everything in my list is true, and verifiably so. Unlike the vast majority of the stuff you've spouted so far.

If you think that actual reality reads like "a fanboy", then congratulations!

-> You have just discovered why it is logical and rational to be positive about nuclear power <-

You are very welcome!

Sounds like a lot of great, high-paying jobs to me.

Sure, but who’s gonna pay for them?

Infrastructure tends to pay for itself.

Whereas with solar and wind, we ship the money to China.

I prefer the cheaper infrastructure that gets the job done. Nuclear is notoriously expensive.

It's actually not.

"Expensive" French nuclear electricity is around half the price of "cheap" German electricity.

The numbers that get passed around the anti-nuke fan-communities are usually completely bogus, for example one uses the price of the Vogtle plant in the US, pretty much the plant with the most time + cost overruns, as the "cost of nuclear".

With that level of wrong, it is hard to attribute it to just incompetence and not malice.

p.s.: As the biggest part of the cost of a nuclear plant currently is finance, i.e. interest payments, time delays = cost overruns.

Nuclear energy in France is heavily subsidized with tax money.

Incorrect.

Nuclear energy in France is heavily used to subsidize other parts of the economy.

EDF had to be bought by the state because it failed to make any profits. The price of nuclear power in France is regulated, which is why EDF failed to make profits. The actual cost for EDF to produce power is secret. The financials leave zero room for new construction, barely cover maintenance and there is insufficient money for decommissioning existing plants.

Incorrect.

EDF was bought out by the state because the state had been siphoning off all its profits.

> The price of nuclear power in France is regulated, which is why EDF failed to make profits.

Exactly. Cheap nuclear electricity was used for decades to subsidize all sorts of industries and endeavors, never allowing EdF to actually profit from the cheap generating capacity.

You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means.

It does.

Do some research.

Incorrect.

Wind power equipment is mostly made in Europe (Denmark, Germany and Spain).

Chinese manufacturers dominate wind power, taking 60% of global market

China leads in renewable energy as Europe falls behind

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Energy/Chinese-manufacturer...

China becomes solar energy superpower, dominates 80% of supply chain

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/china-becomes-...

European made wind still dominates European installs.

China supplies its own massively growing domestic market as well as others.

It's starting to make inroads into Europe, Japan and other places where politicians have sabotaged the renewable transition to the detriment of local manufacturing, but that's a relative recent phenomenon for wind, slightly behind the pace blazed by the same countries on solar.

My life at the holiday table has gotten easier when someone inevitably brings up climate change in whatever capacity. I simply state that, until the mainstream consensus is "build the hell out of nuke plants", I don't want to hear about it. As cool as it was to strap DC motors to your car, they still rely on a carbon-fueled grid and I'm still amazed at the horror on some faces when reminded of the fact.

Anyway, another example of France keeping it real yet again.

“Build the hell out of nuclear plants” isn’t going to have any impact, and having this attitude means you aren’t informed about the state of the world. There are two types of energy technology right now: those that can be constructed in a factory and deployed on an exponential curve (so far that’s solar and wind, and maybe battery storage in the future) and those that aren’t on this trajectory. Unless someone figures out modular reactors, and gets them deployed by the thousands quickly, nuclear isn’t going to matter.

This chart (which I keep posting, apologies HN) helps to illustrate the dynamic: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/9ijkxxhuscrr3x22tewk2/File-De...

1. That turns out not to be the case. Yes, nuclear currently is not built very efficiently, but the efficiency of the plants is so amazing that they are quite competitive.

2. There are several companies that are planning to build reactors in factories. Rolls-Royce is one. I was wondering where they're going to put all those reactors, and the only reasonable answer I could find was upgrading old coal plants.

In fact, that appears to be exactly the plan:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/rolls-royce-in-talks-t...

Pretty cool, when you think of it: all that big and heavy custom infrastructure is already in place. The reactor is built in a factory and shipped there.

And there are a LOT of coal powered plants in the world about to be or already decommissioned.

I am not anti-nuclear. I am anti-1970s-era-nuclear because I see no path by which large bespoke concrete reactors with enormous containment vessels are going to achieve the grid transformation we need on the timescales we need it by. At least not without a WWII level of government involvement, which doesn’t seem politically practical (not even in China, which is doing better than most.)

Modular reactors are at least theoretically feasible. The only question right now is whether they’ll make it from theory to multi-TW deployment before battery storage eats their economic lunch. Over a 20-30 year timeframe that’s not an easy call, though I would personally bet on batteries.

I agree that factory-built reactors are a great way forward, and with so many companies now working on the problem, it seems very likely that at least one will make it happen.

I wish we already had them, because then a lot of these discussions would be moot.

However, even with the current somewhat crazy approach to building, nuclear energy is still quite competitive, and without peer for providing reliable, stable grid-level power.

Which we absolutely need.

There are three kind of power plants being built in Europe right now. Wind, gas and solar. Even in countries like Sweden the building plans and permits being given out right now is wind, gas and solar.

Battery storage, nuclear and reverse hydro might be built in the future. They are all potential technology that cost too much compared to wind, gas and solar.

A rather large contextual note is that wind, gas and solar get practically all the government subsidies, so there is a uphill fight if investors wanted to invest into some of the "future stuff". Wind get most subsidies, solar next, natural gas (and oil) third. Many gas and oil plants in Europe is actually government funded through out, as they operate as reserve energy. They get subsidies just to exist, and then get subsidies when they balance the grid, and last they can get subsidies again since prices during high demand and low supply can become more than the market is willing to bear.

Nuclear energy gets a enormous subsidy by the government taking about 90-99% of the risk insurance.

This is for the US but equivalent laws exist in all countries. For example in Sweden it is capped to about $1.5B which is laughable.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nucle...

In Europe the subsidies for nuclear is marginal and significant less per watt produced than wind, solar and gas.

Talking about insurance in isolation is practically meaningless. Hydropower do not cover risk insurance of flooding, nor does fossil fuel pay insurance against pollution and global warming. The government or private citizens takes that risk, covering 100% of the costs. Wind and solar do not cover risk of forest fires or damages to endangered species. Wind farms on the ocean do not cover risks to changes in currents, and only need to cover a limited survey in term assessing risk to the environment.

In a perfect world all energy production would cover all social and environmental risks of their commercial operation. Intermittent energy sources would then have to pay insurance on the cost of blackouts, as well as the full bill of the reserve energy plan that the government currently pays for. Paying all those through taxes only hide the true cost of energy production away from the consumer.

> In Europe the subsidies for nuclear is marginal and significant less per watt produced than wind, solar and gas.

Gas pays carbon taxes through the ETS system, although not equivalent to the cost of climate change. Existing renewables get some subsidies, new built barely anything.

> Wind and solar do not cover risk of forest fires or damages to endangered species. Wind farms on the ocean do not cover risks to changes in currents, and only need to cover a limited survey in term assessing risk to the environment.

That sounds like coping. Trying to build a false equivalency to paint the huge nuclear subsidy gets as insignificant. On one side we have clear examples like Fukushima costing at least ~$150B to clean up compared to for example the $1.5B insurance limit in Sweden. A 99% subsidy on insurance cost. On the other we have vague references and scaremongering.

> Intermittent energy sources would then have to pay insurance on the cost of blackouts, as well as the full bill of the reserve energy plan that the government currently pays for. Paying all those through taxes only hide the true cost of energy production away from the consumer.

How much should the French nuclear industry pay for having half their fleet off-line right as we went through a huge energy crisis in Europe?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr...

> That sounds like coping

That sounds snarky and name calling.

> Existing renewables get some subsidies, new built barely anything.

Europe has a yearly report on subsidies available online for anyone to read. (https://energy.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-10/annex_to_th...). It clearly marked. Out of the 179 billions euro, more than 40% was assigned to renewables.

The reserve energy plan is not part of the report since its considered operational cost in term of keeping the grid stable. The report on reserve energy however do consider renewables and the increased variability as a cause for new investment and more funding, paid by increased taxes.

> On one side we have clear examples like Fukushima costing at least ~$150B to clean up

Fukushima happened 2011. Oroville Dam failour happened 2016, and caused a larger number of evacuation and loss of life.

So far the US government (thus citizen tax money) has been forced to pay more money money to fix the Oroville Dam than Japanese government has paid fixing Fukushima. The land destroyed by the flood will likely never fully recover nor the owners repaid for the damage.

Going back to Europe, Sweden had some of the worst flooding this year, especially downstream of hydropower plants. In 2021, European floods saw many floods downstream of hydrpower plants, with massive amount of damage and loss of life. The Ukraine was also hit with one of the deadliest attack on their hydropower infrastructure, a attack defined as a major war crime.

> How much should the French nuclear industry pay for having half their fleet off-line right as we went through a huge energy crisis in Europe?

If all power producers was obligated to maintain the grid then the French nuclear industry should pay the same as everyone else when they can't fulfill that obligation. Grid stability is not the governments job, nor the citizens responsibility to pay for.

> It clearly marked. Out of the 179 billions euro, more than 40% was assigned to renewables.

It would be nonsensical to remove the subsidies contracted a decade ago for what was higher risk investments at that time? Flipping it around, lets cancel the CFD giving Hinkley Point C $165/MWh for 35 years after completion and let them free on the market. EDF will cancel the construction overnight and eat the loss.

I would also suggest you read your own report. Since it clearly states that renewable subsidies are down year on year. They are being phased out and new ones do not match what existed 2015-2019.

But I know that it doesn't match your conviction of "hurt durr renewable subsidies!!".

> The reserve energy plan is not part of the report since its considered operational cost in term of keeping the grid stable. The report on reserve energy however do consider renewables and the increased variability as a cause for new investment and more funding, paid by increased taxes.

The "reserve energy" is a market opportunity to arbitrage it which means any solution to it will both reduce any potential nuclear plants profitability, and solve it for the general consumer. But I understand, coming from a static nuclear view of the world transformation is chaotic and hard to comprehend.

It is happening though, through pure economics. Renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, which in turn are cheaper than nuclear. The world is racing towards a new equilibrium built on renewables, it will be extremely interesting to see where we end up in 20-30 years.

What is certain though, is that nuclear will have a miniscule impact on that future. It is luxury power for niche applications. Perfect for submarines and barely even aircraft carriers.

> Oroville Dam failour happened 2016, and caused a larger number of evacuation and loss of life. So far the US government (thus citizen tax money) has been forced to pay more money money to fix the Oroville Dam than Japanese government has paid fixing Fukushima. The land destroyed by the flood will likely never fully recover nor the owners repaid for the damage.

Please cite some numbers? Or are facts optional when trying to frame nuclear positively?

All I can find is:

- 0 deaths.

- $1.1B in damages, which is 0.7% of the current estimate for Fukushima.

Or do you mean the floodings, which were even worse, which the Oroville dam was built to contain? You know, hydropower also prevents flooding which means it prevents deaths by existing.

> The flood in late 1955 and early 1956 was historic. It caused widespread damage in Northern and Central California, resulted in 64 deaths and more than $200 million in property damage. To prevent further flooding, the state passed a $25 million appropriations act, including money for a dam. The dam was to be located on California’s Feather River, just above the town of Oroville, about 70 miles north of Sacramento.

> Going back to Europe, Sweden had some of the worst flooding this year, especially downstream of hydropower plants. In 2021, European floods saw many floods downstream of hydrpower plants, with massive amount of damage and loss of life. The Ukraine was also hit with one of the deadliest attack on their hydropower infrastructure, a attack defined as a major war crime.

Please cite numbers. This is all vague handwaving. The nuclear numbers in Fukushima are certain, $150B versus insurance for $1.5B. Society, through taxes, picks up $148.5B.

Banquio Dam Failure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

150K people died (some estimates go to 250K) 4.6 million people displaced 11 million homes destroyed

How many countries got out of Hydro as a result?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_...

Bhopal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

Death toll: at least 5K, other figures say up to 16K Over half a million injured

How many countries shuttered their chemical industries as a result?

You realise that you are living the cliche of the uninformed but highly opinionated relative at holiday dinners?

Your relatives are almost certainly in the right, just by vaguely following whatever the mainstream media is saying, even if they can't penetrate your carefully crafted wall of internalised propaganda you've thrown up.

Er...exactly the opposite.

It is the relatives that are following what the mainstream media is saying, which just happens to be wrong, but has been fortified with a wall of propaganda that feels just right.

> You realise that you are living the cliche of the uninformed but highly opinionated relative at holiday dinners?

What the hell are you going on about? If someone offers their unwarranted take they developed using talking points from "The Week", then I will readily admit my ignorance on the topic and insist I outsource this thought process to the French government. If nuke plants are, have been, and will continue to be heavily utilized for moving their electrons, then I'm going to need every "green energy" evangelist to be able to tell me why the French are actually massive idiots and in reality, we should all have hamster wheels at home hooked to the grid or something.

> Your relatives are almost certainly in the right, just by vaguely following whatever the mainstream media is saying, even if they can't penetrate your carefully crafted wall of internalised propaganda you've thrown up.

Do you assume all people are this conniving? I'd much rather talk about hobbies and achievements with family at Christmas dinner, not energy policy.

I was about to ask if you'd even read the post I replied to, then realised you wrote it.

Dis you?

> My life at the holiday table has gotten easier when someone inevitably brings up climate change in whatever capacity. I simply state that, until the mainstream consensus is "build the hell out of nuke plants", I don't want to hear about it. As cool as it was to strap DC motors to your car, they still rely on a carbon-fueled grid and I'm still amazed at the horror on some faces when reminded of the fact.

> France is currently reducing the share of nuclear in favor of renewable energy.

That was the plan indeed until about 2020 when they realised that renewables could not sustain the French demand. The Russian war was the final nail in the coffin of the all renewable plan.

The law reducing the share of nuclear then got scrapped and the custom electricity market applied there negociated in the EU designed to prop-up competitors is in grand danger of being scrapped as well.

... except the carbon intensity (carbon emission per electricity generated) of France stayed basically flat throughout the last 20 years, and it actually slightly increased in 2022 compared to years before, likely due to corrosion issues in reactors and droughts which led to reduced nuclear output. Are they being complacent because they already are "ahead of the game?"

Also I find it interesting that Germany gets the brunt of the critic for not using nuclear even though they managed to steadily reduce carbon intensity (at least pre covid) of their grid, meanwhile Japan, whose carbon intensity shot up after 2011 because of a certain event and still hasn't returned to pre-2011 level, gets a pass since it apparently killed no people with radiation during the process.

> except the carbon intensity (carbon emission per electricity generated) of France stayed basically flat throughout the last 20 years, and it actually slightly increased in 2022 compared to years before, likely due to corrosion issues in reactors and droughts which led to reduced nuclear output. Are they being complacent because they already are "ahead of the game?"

Well, it stayed flat because it was already very low to begin with. Only Sweden was below that, and they are the only countries which didn't "improve". See [0] for the CO2 emissions to produce 1 kWh of electricity in the EU. It stops at 2020, so it doesn't say anything about your point on 2022. But it shows that Germany, even though they reduced CO2 emissions by a hefty amount, are still quite terrible compared to France, emitting more than three times the CO2 per kWh.

[0] https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/editi...

You are clearly talking about only electricity production.

The article is talking about all sectors.

The UK and France have both reduced their per capita intensity over the last few decades but after an early lead by France, the UK has caught up and may well overtake.

Emissions shift with manufacturing. And for Western countries that means outsourcing to China.

So much this. Is there anywhere where we can see emissions by what is consumed rather than what is produced?

It's pure politics to outsource everything to China and India then complain that they're the biggest culprits.

It's easy to google this data, see Figure 1 on this link, from official UK statistics: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uks-carbon-footprin...

It is mentioned in the article and they include figures. I’m not convinced by the reliability of those figures, given the carbon intensity of the imports (from a higher carbon grid in China and from the transport)

Other sources put U.K. imports at 30% of total energy use, but you need to include the environmental impact too. Better to import 100MWh of goods from Iceland or Norway than 10MWh from China or India.

The narrative that manufacturing was outsourced to China and India and those same were then blamed for carbon emissions removes agency from China and India.

If they want manufacturing industry, then they should acknowledge the externalities that come with that.

But we want the things they manufacture. I'm arguing for sharing the agency, not putting it all on the UK and others. The climate doesn't care about borders. There's a global demand for manufacturing, we just don't want it in our own backyards.

> Is there anywhere where we can see emissions by what is consumed rather than what is produced?

https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

They do address that and mention consumption, and the U.K. is down 32% including import, second to Italy.

Recessions help with emissions. Like in Germany.

This is a long term trend

In general, this isn't as big a difference as many claim. On the other hand, the UK is probably an outlier in this regard and exhibits one of the largest such effects, so the reduction given as 50% in the article is more like 35% once imports are accounted for.

Some comparitive graphs in this article:

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling

> Emissions shift with manufacturing. And for Western countries that means outsourcing to China.

Consumption-based emissions are also down for the UK from a peak of 750 Mt down to 500 Mt:

* https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

Chinese people get paid a lot less so they have a much smaller carbon footprint. It’s an environmental and economic win-win situation.

The ridiculous and incompetent Tories of today might be changing this, but historically the UK has been fairly unique in that even their right wing party (the Conservative party) are fairly pro green policies. Conservation of the environment in the UK has been considered a Conservative party tradition and the UK Conservatives did not find it difficult to shift from environmental conservation at the local level to the global level (i.e. also acting against climate change). In fact, Boris Johnson was one of the biggest promoters of rewilding and reducing emissions.

Unfortunately the political incompetents running the Conservative party today have taken the result of a single local issue in a single election where they did pretty badly but did not do as badly as the worst case scenario and decided that it means the British public is for worse transit, worse environmental policies, and less government incentive to reduce energy costs and greening the grid.

I'm hopeful that whenever this ridiculous conservative party is forced to call an election (within the next year or so), the larger British public will punish them for it and get rid of the trash that has taken over the party.

Was recently reading about new Viking Link interconnect between UK and Denmark.

Scheduled to come online soon.

https://www.viking-link.com/

The UK has made good progress with renewables, but measuring from a peak 1970 the overwhelming majority of that is going to be down to the move away from coal. In 1970, most power generation and home heating used coal. Even cooking used coal gas. Oil and gas were found in the North Sea in the 1970s, the coal industry was killed by Thatcher in the 1980s and the privatised energy companies moved most power generation to gas during the 90s. The biggest remaining coal-fired power station (Drax) was converted to biomass in the past decade.

https://archive.is/AHFlh

Good on them. More countries should follow.

Not read past the paywall. Could anyone let me know if this statement is clarified?

> no politicians likely to trumpet it

Irrespective of whether or not it's outsourcing to China and so not quite the truth, I can't see why politicians wouldn't lay claim to it. Isn't it their modus operandi to find positive news they could attribute to their own efforts?

This government is leaning heavily into culture wars, they are unlikely to attach themselves to something they are painting as “woke” (cleaner air in school playgrounds, lack of smog, etc)

The current government is very unpopular, but they won a small by-election by opposing London's ultra low emissions zone. So they're now shifting to an anti-environmental stance in the hope that will save them in the next election (they were hardly pro-environment previously).

This is probably down more to the lack of overlap between people who care about carbon accounting and those who celebrate petty jingoistic "victories" like being the first nation in the G20 to achieve collectively agreed targets.

Often there's an archive.whateverTLD link in comments, there's one here:

https://archive.is/AHFlh

Can't read due to paywall but maybe worth pointing out this is seemingly an opinion piece by the editor of this conservative and climate-skeptic magazine.

I did a quick Google and couldn't find a more neutral news item with appropriate context so I'll be taking the headline with a pinch of salt until that.

For those unaware and to give an idea of leanings, the magazine used to be edited by Boris Johnson.

The tone of the article is very much “climate change is a problem but the U.K. is a tiny amount of it and it won’t be impacted by the U.K. magically cutting all emissions, the only influence the U.K. has is in showing emissions can be cut, and it’s doing a good job on that. It also mentions cuts to use of fertiliser and other non co2 issues

To be fair it’s a solid point.

To be fair to Boris, he did push a reasonable amount on various green issues, set some long term policies, targets, etc, while he was pm.

Yeh, but reducing CO2 emissions generally also results in the reduction of other pollutants so it’s still worthwhile doing to get cleaner air

Plus switching to non-fossil fuel energy sources reduces dependency on the Middle East autocracies

It’s quite impressive how financially penalizing automobile use like in London - sure you can drive as long as you lop off a testicle for His Majesty - and they also have a significant train system.

Eventually the math will work its way to the point where Nations will have to admit their Airlines are the biggest polluters in their purview and it will be hard conversation.

Frankly there’s a very easy avenue to significantly address two issues:

Emissions and Global Pilot Shortages

In 2024 if passenger aviation went down by 25% in the United States the GDP would improve by a statistically noticeable amount.

I should write an article about this…3rd generation aviator (no license due to handicap)

Maybe eventually, but afaik aviation is something like 4% of emissions currently. A lot, but not our biggest concern. Probably also not the area where you get the biggest CO2 reduction per money invested.

Your figure is accurate for the global scale. In the USA it's also around 3%.

In the UK, it's 8% though: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/28/scientists-...

This is right in percentage terms - but also worth noting that the UK produces 4.7 tonnes of co2 per capita vs USA's 14.4 metric tons per capita.

i.e. taking your 8% and 3% figures along with the tonnes of co2 above would mean in raw CO2 terms, the USA is producing more tonnes of aviation carbon per capita (i.e. per person) than the UK.

The UK would be at 2.6% if it consumed 'other carbon' at USA rates (i.e. 14.4 metric tons per capita), but it is 8% because it consumed 4.7 tonnes per capita.

The USA excludes international aviation emissions while the UK includes them in their figure (the only country to do so). Domestic UK aviation emissions are tiny.

What domestic flights even are there? The only ones I'm aware of are Belfast to assorted cities in England.

I know at least Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh all connect to London.

I've flown to Newquay as well.

There's over 182 domestic routes flown in the UK (Heathrow - Edinburgh is the most popular one): https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/domestic-flights-in-the...

I've flown Newcastle to Southampton (and back) a few times.

Loads of people fly from London/Birmingham to Edinburgh/Glasgow and visa-versa (it's often cheaper and faster than the train).

Then obviously NI as you mentioned.

The interesting thing is that even in the USA only 50% of people fly in any one year.

Funny I drove in london a couple of weeks ago just fine. Stayed in a hotel near docklands, later drove to the British library and parked there for a few hours.

Yes there was a financial sting from parking, last I checked NCP wasn’t owned by the government though.

Even if I had gone into the very centre of london the cost of parking far outweighs the cost of the congestion charge.

Most people driving in the ULEZ and congestion charge zones arent paying for parking.

Although the ULEZ only charges a vanishingly small number of vehicles, and the congestion charge only affects the most central part of the city.

Driving in most of London is no more expensive than other UK cities.

And the vast majority of vehicles are ulez exempt. Doesn’t stop those in the outer boroughs whining about how the commies are coming for their teslas though.

And someone is paying for that parking, land isn’t free.

The UK is surrounded by water, and ships are a comparatively slow means of transportation.

There is a train to europe and can get you there in ~60 mins.

Nitpick: you're already in Europe even before getting on that train.

But we know what you mean... :)

> There is a train to europe and can get you there in ~60 mins.

...from London. Most of the country, and a large majority of the population, isn't in London.

And nor will those 60 minutes take you through all of Europe.

You seem overly focused on London.

> And nor will those 60 minutes take you through all of Europe.

Because mainland Europe is larger than the uk?

> You seem overly focused on London.

Not really. I live a long way from London and haven't been there for many years. I do, however, know how things work in this country.

The Eurostar is great and I've taken it quite a few times. But realistically, it is way too expensive right now to seriously compete with flying for most people. It is typically 2x-3x as expensive as flying from Heathrow/Gatwick to CDG, for example. That really adds up if you are traveling with multiple people. We really need more services and more competition.

There is a new operator offering a service, I think it starts in 2025.

High bandwidth though.

Speed is somewhat irrelevant here as what matters is how many ships per day they can process.

>Speed is somewhat irrelevant here

No, it's not, because people. I really don't see a future where anyone gives up civil aviation for the climate. More likely a combination of electrification, biofuel, and hydrogen will be the solution.

It's already happening with TEN-T on the continent. Even though slower, travel by train in generally city centre to city centre and much less hassle, so where feasible can supplant aviation.

What does civil aviation have to do with the bulk transport of goods by massive container and bulk carrier ships?

Ship journey time is irrevelant to volume | tonnage moved as the limiting factors are port capacity and water approach limitations.

A ship journey is a long pipe, you can pop 6 ships a day in one end and have 6 ships a day arriving at the other end.

Kind of irrelevant to reducing aviation emissions, given that people only pay for air freight when speed is a priority.

> Eventually the math will work its way to the point where Nations will have to admit their Airlines are the biggest polluters in their purview and it will be hard conversation.

I can’t see how this would ever happen. Passenger aviation is ~2% of global carbon emissions. There is no climate model that relies on cutting passenger aviation to meet its targets.

Domestic aviation is 2% of global emissions. The Paris Accords didn't require any country to accept responsibility for emissions from international flights and only the UK does so (and only beginning in 2023).

> Eventually the math will work its way to the point where Nations will have to admit their Airlines are the biggest polluters in their purview and it will be hard conversation.

If we're at that point, then we'll have already won the battle against emissions. Aviation is tiny compared to land transport, sea transport, heating, manufacturing, etc. For aviation to become the biggest polluter, we'll need all the above to reduce emissions by 90+%.

>In 2024 if passenger aviation went down by 25% in the United States the GDP would improve by a statistically noticeable amount.

How does that make any sense? You propose to generate more economic activity by... reducing the amount of economic activity occuring?

A lot of what people fly for could be done as a phone call, or so many claim. That would return the cost of the trip to something else.

Income's circular. Airline related employees etc would have less. While others get the substitution. But where's the net increase?

Those employees would need to get a new, more productive job

Services get cheaper so we consume more of them. See Jevon's paradox.

Definitely not penalising enough.

It has always fascinated me how incredibly car-dependent the UK is, given how small, densely populated and flat it is. The UK seems to have the perfect conditions for getting rid of the automobile entirely, but in reality public transport in the UK (at least outside of London, but sometimes even there) falls short, even compared to much larger and more scarcely populated nations.

The only good examples inside of Europe of countries where you can get by train to almost everywhere, in time, are very far and few between.

Switzerland is of course in there, maybe Netherlands, maybe Belgium, not sure about Denmark, certainly not France nor Germany. Rail transport outside of Paris which does not involve the TGV is absolutely crap, meaning expensive (unless you purchase your tickets 3 months in advance or some crazy stuff like that) and it doesn’t get you to where you want, unless you want to get from Paris to one of the big other big French cities, but in that case you’d take the TGV anyway.

Spain's rail system was great during my (admittedly very short) visit.

My claim is not that public transport is perfect everywhere else in Europe, only that the preconditions for good public transport are much better in the UK than in most other countries, such as France or Germany, yet it isn't vastly superior. In my personal experience, public transport in the UK is definitely worse than in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark, but I would argue it's worse than in Germany, France and even Sweden. Mind you, I don't restrict this to trains, buses make more sense in scarcely populated areas and their reliability tends to be highly affected by local politics.

The UK does have good public transport. It just doesn't have amazing public transport. I would disagree public transport in Germany is better. Deutsche Bahn trains are notorious for being late.

Ekeryone complains about their local system. What does the data show?

That 34.8% of long-distance trains were late in 2022. [0]

[0] https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2022/fileadmin/pdf/dufe_2022.p...

> Deutsche Bahn trains are notorious for being late.

Statements like this don't make sense unless you take into account cultural differences in what "late" means.

In Germany people think that a 5-10 minute delay is unacceptable. In the UK trains are so frequently late and cancelled that when a train is 5-10 mins late, it's considered on time.

No that's not true. UK punctuality figures are based on actual lateness, not perceived lateness. If a train is more than 15 minutes late in the UK you're entitled to compensation on a sliding scale up to one hour when you're entitled to a full refund of your ticket.

I don't know about that, I take trains in the UK a lot, and the _vast_ majority arrive exactly when expected.

Plenty of people here don't need cars. Granted they're mostly people in the cities and large towns. I'm almost 40 and don't know how to drive. Buses and trains can get me everywhere I want to be.

One third of British households have no car.

The USA has 908 vehicles per 1000 people; the UK just 600.

I can understand people not owning a car, but not learning to drive seems short sighted. Driving is a life skill like swimming.

I'm also 40, and I've driven so little that I might well have saved money by spending the cost of learning and getting certified on taxis and public transport for the same trips.

No idea how far we really are from a no-steering-wheel-needed car, so this may or may not remain true as the years continue to pass, but now I live in Berlin and (non-express) public transport nationwide is only €49/month and is good enough to rely on — I've even seen people literally take a kitchen sink with them on the tram.

>One third of British households have no car.

I'd like to believe that but judging by my neighbours I'm struggling to.

Depends where you live - I'm in London, and probably 1/10th of my friends have a car, at most.

It seems it’s 21% (in 2021).

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-travel-sur...

> The UK seems to have the perfect conditions for getting rid of the automobile entirely

How do you get your dog to the vet?

Or, we're going away to a country cottage for christmas. How do we get all our stuff there?

If niche situations like those are the only ones this person needs a car for, it might be better for them to rent a car for situations like those, rather than keep and maintain a vehicle full time. Still reducing car use by a lot even if it's not getting rid of it "entirely".

I agree - car hire/share/rent works out great for these "one offs", but it's worth noting that these "niche situations" can happen pretty often, and it's entirely at odds with "getting rid of the automobile entirely".

At a certain point you'd have to think to yourself, I have "niche situations" every week, maybe I actually do need to have my own car. And that's not the "niche situation" OC was describing.

> How do you get your dog to the vet?

A taxi? I don't know how uber or whatever work, but you can just ask for a taxi to take your dog somewhere

This gets “rid of the automobile entirely,” how, exactly?

> getting rid of the automobile entirely

Saying "entirely", or "all" or "every" or "always" always results in the pile of replies you see where people come up with counterexamples.

But the UK was built without the car; we had thousands of years of pre-modern economy, and the peak of the Empire was entirely done by rail and ship. That serves as an existence proof for ways of life in which many people do not permanently own a car.

Car dependency was a choice of the 1960s and the Beeching era.

Doubtful they will just switch to SAF and pass on the cost.

Not enough plant oils to make sufficient quantities of SAF so somehow we need to synthesise it from atmospheric CO2

The airline industry looks like the least likely to decarbonise to me. I'm extremely sceptical about any messaging from them that purports to indicate they have any intention in that direction.

If this is what victory looks like I'll take the rising sea please.

If you have to be told that you are "akstually winning!" then it's a very sad win, if any at all.

Nobody in the general sense is better off but let’s all celebrate because some bureaucrats’ climate targets were met.

Degrowth is a suicide cult.

TLDR; people in the UK are poorer by half.

1. It's behind a paywall so if others have a link that would be great

2. The UK is (now) almost [80% services industries](https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity...) not building anything.

3. With that in mind it's kind of bad it's taken us this long to get to 50% of the 1970 output.

Prepend archive.is/ to the URL. The images are cut off but you can open them in a new tab to see the whole image.

I would also recommend https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions . You can compare the UK to other countries. It seems to be doing rather well (though it has huge historical emissions), e.g. the UK is at 4.6 tonnes CO2 per person, while Germany is at 8.

Well, Germany is doing particularly horribly.

The "Energiewende" was a huge failure, due to its reliance on Russian Gas, even before the Russian Gas thing blew up in our faces and we had to scramble to buy up all the gas on the international market.

In what way was it a failure? CO2 per kWh had been going down steadily. Germany just built less renewables than the UK.

Coal use went UP the last two years, not down. This year it's down, in part due to the recession reducing overall demand. And the recession is in large part due to high energy prices.

Germany has the 2nd highest electricity prices in the EU. AND the 2nd highest CO2 emissions per unit of energy. That's after 20 years of "Energiewende". If that isn't a failure, I don't know what is.

And yes, emissions do go down. It's just that "yes, renewables produce some electricity some of the time" is not exactly success.

In large part due to making up the French nuclear shortfall.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-power-fr...

France had planned inspection and maintenance shutdowns that took longer because they had deferred those during the COVID years.

Scheduled for the summer when electricity consumption is lowest and PV generation is highest.

Because, well, you actually can schedule power generation with a nuclear power plant.

And that was the only year. In 2023 France is exporting to Germany again.

Now you are misrepresenting facts to present a rosy picture. Is it that hard to go by the facts? Or does nuclear power require lies to be sold?

They found unexpected corrosion cracks in critical cooling pipes across much of the fleet. It was not planned or deferred maintenance.

We lasted the entire winter with half the French nuclear energy fleet off line, when it was needed the most. France was an importer of German coal the entire winter.

Now we are back, but we need to keep in mind that fleets of nuclear plants share the issues. Exactly like when we ground fleets of commercial aircraft. The failure modes are correlated.

Nothing that I wrote was wrong.

Now they actually found a problem during these routine inspections, so they took longer than anticipated. Though that's kind of why you have inspections: so you find problems before they become real problems. Which is what happened here.

And again, the reason it was so many power stations at the same time is that maintenance was deferred during the COVID years (and the chronic underinvestment the last decades). So stuff accumulates. But again, this is because they were able to choose when to do this.

Which is pretty much the opposite of how it was portrayed in the press in Germany and how it stuck in the minds of anti-nuclear advocates.

Good to know that they chose to do the safety critical maintenance during winter and coinciding with a fossil gas supply crisis due to war in Europe.

Smart thinking!

Incorrect.

They chose to do it in summer. Because they found more than they had anticipated, it took longer.

You're welcome.

Is it so hard to stick to the truth when promoting nuclear power?

They unexpectedly found corrosion cracks and immediately shut down the plant. Based on this they precautionar shut down several plants. Then as fast as possible they inspected the rest of the fleet and shut down the offending reactors.

They did not plan it.

Is it so hard to stick to the truth when trying to denigrate nuclear power?

(Narrator: yes it is)

The shutdowns for the inspections and maintenance were planned. Not for a single plant, for a lot of plants. The inspections found a problem. The shutdowns were extended so they could be fixed, in the original plants and in other plants that might also be affected.

The shutdowns, the inspections and the maintenance were planned.

What they found was obviously not planned. If you could plan for what you find during an inspection, you wouldn't need an inspection. That's why you inspect.

End of story.

Renewables account for something like 40% of electricity production in Germany. That’s a lot more than „some be energy some of the time“.

That's pretty cool. Now I'm waiting for India and China.

India and China manufacture the goods that the developed world wants. You can't just shift your carbon-intensive industry overseas and then go smirking smugly about how those developing nations emit so much.

If you want to be honest, a good metric is CO2 per capita for goods consumed, not manufactured.

If you go wholly off of consumption then you remove responsibility for the manufacturing to improve.

Turns out the world is one giant complex system, there are no simple answers.

China is the world leader in building out renewables. They are ahead.

This. China built more wind in 2023 than total UK generating capacity, and more solar than total US solar generating capacity.

"to halve it's carbon emissions... and the economy". Congrats UK, soon carbon free with people on the streets.

Why don't you talk about the British nuclear leakage that caused severe nuclear pollution in European waters? The British are really smart. They control the world's media and say the best about everything, but they are the initiators of the current geopolitical disputes around the world.

Well you seem to feel very strongly about it, so I assume you'd be a good person to tell us about these leaks. Do you have data / links you want to provide?

The uk does have a problem with massaging statistics. Healthcare being one. I wouldnt be surprised if the same happened with co2 emissions.

> The British … control the world's media

With our secret mind rays from our lizard king, yes

Can you back it up with some sources on the following 3 points? * nuclear * control of the media * starter of geopolitical disputes.

The UK doesn't think for itself much anymore when it comes to geopolitical disputes. They copy the decision making of the US almost always.

Have a look at this: https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/INTERAC...

This figure likely came at a large cost to the economy. GDP/capita isn't looking good compared to the rest of the western world...

Turns out when you tell everyone they have to sit in a barely-heated house and shouldn't drive their car or fly, GDP goes down.

Eg. https://twitter.com/MortenORavn/status/1538160446150156292

Did GDP go down 50%? I don’t think so.

no - far from it. But any GDP loss today compounds over generations.

What an odd mix of short and long term thinking. Obviously the destruction of the environment will also have a compounding effect on GDP over generations.

Yup, so we're trading one thing for another. Nothing is so cut and dry.

Well, there might be other externalities not captured by GDP as a result of destroying the environment.

Further comment would involve breaching HN guidelines.

This is indeed the typical spin article.

While in itself it is good that emissions are going down, most of the underlying reasons and explanations for this 50% drop are actually negative or unrelated to "environmental progress".

How so?

I think the peak was achieved earlier than most countries because of the switch from coal to natural gas when North Sea gas started to be exploited, combined with the decimation of industry at the same time and later. Further down the line, the economy has stalled since 2008.

Sure renewables are growing like they do everywhere, but overall the energy policy, if there is one at all, is chaotic.

So, to me, praising "environmental progress" and how well the UK is doing is pure spin.

The masses demand taxes. Likely poverty will increase further as a result. No disposable income means no spending means no economy. But good luck explaining that to communist sympathisers.

Understandable point but it would seem that the price of natural gas has had a far greater bearing on the economy.

e.g. the "energy price guarantee" of last Winter cost something of the order of ~£30bn to the taxpayer, all due to the national grid's pricing system being largely dependent on the cost of natural gas, and the UK's relatively higher reliance on natural gas for heating.

Lots of European countries and the United States have had emissions fall. The lack of productivity growth is relatively unique to the U.K. (and some countries like Italy)

No it isn't - UK productivity is on-par with Canada and Australia, and consistently above New Zealand and Japan.

Poor GDP is a complex question to answer but lowering the heating by a degree doesn't seem like the best attempt at exploring it(!).

Transport might be a better part of the explanation, but more because of the lack of investment in decent transportation beyond London (the recent HS2 cancellation being one example).

For me, I suspect poor GDP performance is due to a lack of investment/success in manufacturing and science, in part because of an over-emphasis on the city/finance and other (in-part) rent-seeking activities which has sucked in talent and energy, but also because of a general incompetence of government over the last 20 years.

GDP per capita in the UK is on-par with France and within a few percentage points of Canada. It's really not an outlier at all.

What is the source of the fascination of this site's visitors with renewables, carbon dioxide, EVs, climate activism and the like? The same visitors who are responsible for a ton of annual electronics waste, and millions of kW/h wasted for hosting their toy apps in clouds?

I'm using a PC I bought 7 years ago. My phone is also 7 years old. I use less than the national average household amount for energy, and don't drive.

Think maybe your generalisation is a bit wide of the mark.

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