Charging towards zero carbon

By Chris Davey

On 23 September 2023, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “We’ve had the fastest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the G7. Down almost 50% since 1990.” He then went on to compare the UK with other countries, notably France (always a favourite!) which had achieved, he said, 22% reduction. (I’ve seen it as 24% but what’s two percent between friends…)

The government line is that we are doing very well on our way to “net zero” and, in terms of how much we have improved, there is some truth in the claim. For example, our electricity production has become far less carbon-intensive in recent years, with fossil fuels now contributing only 44% to the mix, while coal has all-but disappeared.

But I thought I’d look into this a little further, with invaluable help from the excellent Radio 4 programme More Or Less, whose presenter Tim Harford humorously compared this to the improvement in his own Park Run times; he has improved quite a lot recently, compared with Mo Farrah, whose times would be practically unchanged for some years – the point being that the UK started from a far worse position than some other countries, notably France, which has been dependent on nuclear energy for electricity generation for some decades. Now, like it or loathe it, on a day-to-day basis, nuclear electricity is very low carbon (not the building of the power stations, which is very carbon intensive) and therefore the French had already established an electricity generating infrastructure that was lower in carbon emissions than the UK’s, so there was less scope for improvement. We used to burn lots of coal – now we don’t, and we have also expanded renewables, and so we’ve improved a lot.

To look at the data, I used Our World in Data, giving the per capita carbon emissions by country. There is, unsurprisingly, a lot of data available on www.ourworldindata.org, so I’ve drawn a few numbers from their ocean of the stuff. The world average carbon emission per person in 2021 was 6.90t (tonnes of CO2e, carbon dioxide equivalent*). The figure for UK was 6.26t; our nearest EU “neighbours” in terms of similar emissions were Italy, slightly higher at 6.28t, and Sweden, lower at 6.22t. France weighed in at 6.06t, so despite improving less than UK, they still emit less per person than UK. So just a snapshot; if you want the full story, the figures for emissions per capita for every country are available at the url above.

“Electric cars cause less emission in use than their oil-powered equivalents even if the electricity has all come from a coal power station, because their engines are so much more efficient than internal combustion engines.”(From his highly recommended book There Is No Planet B.)

So it was great news to me that Cornwall Council is taking the decarbonising of transport seriously, and in partnership with Swarco, has set up EV charge points in 42 of its car parks across Cornwall. Details at Cornwall Council.

And just look at who helped to fund this project!

* This is the recognised way to represent all greenhouse gas emissions recalculated as though they were all CO2 – in fact, there would be other gases, e.g. methane and nitrogen oxides in the mix, but this simplifies the stats.