New figures released by the Office for National Statistics have revealed that Britain’s energy consumption dropped by 13 percent between 1990-2019, as COP26 gets underway.
The UK’s share in renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power has increased from 1 to 13 percent over the same time.
The report, which focussed on household behaviours, also revealed that the last decade has seen residential recycling rates increase from 40–45 per cent.
And between 2007–2018, the overall volume of food waste, around 70 per cent of which comes from homes, fell by around 15 per cent to 9.5 million tonnes.
These findings may provide some comfort to those concerned about climate change — who, as of March this year, made up 76% of the population, up 11% since 2012.
COP26, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, began yesterday in Glasgow, Scotland, and will run until Friday November 12, 2021.
On the eve of the event, PM Boris Johnson told world leaders at the G20 summit in Rome that there are ‘no compelling excuses’ for not tackling climate change.
As COP26 begins, new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), reveal that Britain’s energy use fell by 13% between 1990-1999.
The UK’s share in renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power has increased from 13% to 13% over the same time. Pictured: The UK’s renewable energy share compared to Australia, Brazil China, France Germany, Germany, and the United States.
The findings may provide some comfort to those concerned about climate change — who, as of March this year, made up 76% of the population, up 11% since 2012
According to experts like the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit’s Simon Cran-McGreehin, the UK’s declining energy usage stems from various shifts.
He explained that the policy includes “policies driving improvement in energy efficiency, switching from an industrial to service-based economy and moving away from coal power sector.”
Our neighbours in Europe, meanwhile, appear last year to have reversed a general trend for increasing overall energy consumption, with a total decrease of 0.6 per cent on 2019 — although it remains unclear how much of this is a result of COVID-19.
Regardless, however, last week’s European Commission State of the Energy Union report highlighted that 2020 was the first year in which the EU’s share of renewable energy sources (38 per cent) exceeded that of fossils fuels (37 per cent).
According to the ONS, nearly three quarters of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 came from homes and the energy, manufacturing and transport sector — with households being the largest of these contributors.
This data included residential uses of fossil-fuels such as heating homes and traveling for work, domestic, or leisure purposes.
Survey data indicates that the public are becoming more concerned about climate change — up by 11 per cent in March last year as compared to back in mid-2012 — a fact that may be helping to drive recycling uptake and reductions in food waste.
Statistics from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy show that more than a quarter (24%) of the 54 percent of the public who reported lastyear trying to reduce food waste did so in order to combat climate changes.
However, two-thirds said they were driven by other motivations such as ethical or medical reasons.
Similar to the BEIS polling, it revealed that just over a quarter of those who said they tried reduce energy use in the past year said this was mainly to combat climate change. 11 percent cited climate change as a factor.
According to the ONS, nearly three quarters of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 came from homes and the energy, manufacturing and transport sector — with households being the largest of these contributors
The findings were not all good news, however — with statistics from the Department of Transport indicating that emissions from Britain’s international aviation have risen by 138 per cent since 1990, reaching 16 million tonnes CO₂ equivalent in 2019.
In 2019 alone, UK residents made 93.1 million trips abroad — an increase of 64 per cent over the year 2000 figure — with 63 per cent of trips in 2019 being holidays, while business trips only accounted for around a tenth of overseas journeys.
At the same time, however, emissions from domestic air travel have remained pretty constant over the same time period and in fact dropped marginally from 1.5 million tonnes CO₂ equivalent in 1990 to 1.4 million tonnes CO₂ equivalent come 2019.
According to the ONS, these emission figures were derived from Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy statistics on UK deliveries of aviation fuel — but does not include that used for military aviation purposes.
The full findings of the review were published on the Office for National Statistics website.
The findings were not all good news, however — with statistics from the Department of Transport indicating that emissions from Britain’s international aviation have risen by 138 per cent since 1990, reaching 16 million tonnes CO₂ equivalent in 2019. At the same time, however, emissions from domestic air travel have remained pretty constant over the same time period and in fact dropped marginally from 1.5 million tonnes CO₂ equivalent in 1990 to 1.4 million tonnes CO₂ equivalent come 2019