Public Interest Research Centre - PIRC

Worth thinking about...

UPDATE:  Dieter Helm has published an excellent report attempting to answer this question, called "Too good to be true? The UK's Climate Change Record, download it here.

The ESRC's Research Group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment (RESOLVE) has just published an important initial analysis of the UK's carbon footprint based on final consumption. From our research on CAT's Zero Carbon Britain project we're very aware that further research in this field is sorely needed.

Abstract

The UK Climate Change Bill proposes to establish legally binding targets for a 60% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. This paper discusses the challenges posed by measuring progress towards this target. It takes as a premise that the conventional production-based accounting framework, enshrined in the UNFCCC emissions accounting guidelines, is inappropriate for this task because it fails to account for the carbon ‘traded’ across the UK national boundary. Accordingly, it sets out a consumption-based accounting framework – using a two-region Environmental Input–Output (EIO) model – which could in principle measure progress in reducing the emissions attributable to final consumers in the UK.

It illustrates the use of this framework to measure the reduction in carbon dioxide achieved by the UK between 1990 (the Kyoto base year) and the year 2004 and compares this against the production perspective. The results indicate that any progress towards the UK's carbon reduction targets (visible under a production perspective) disappears completely when viewed from a consumption perspective. But the robustness of this conclusion depends critically on the accuracy of underlying economic and environmental datasets as well as specific assumptions concerning imports. By analysing the consistency of UK Input–Output data, we conclude that EIO is still some way from being able to answer the critical question of the carbon trade balance for the UK. In these circumstances, measuring real progress towards carbon reduction in the UK remains elusive.

Download

Working on the basis that you can never have too much information, along comes a new web application from the Center for Global Development called CARMA (Carbon Monitoring for Action).

CARMA, at it's most basic, is a nice packaging of an enormous dataset. CGD have taken information about the size, ownership and 'carbon intensity' of all the power plants (electricity generating) around the world, and presented it through a really usable, intricate web interface. You can quickly grab information about power plants near you, or in the US, or wherever, and see which are the biggest ones, which pump out the most carbon into the atmosphere, and which are producing the most power for the lowest carbon pollution hit.

Although they apparently can't flag up what technology each power plant uses for data protection reasons, (so CARMA won't tell you if a power plant is coal fired, gas fired, or solar powered, for instance), the application gives you good quantative data clearly, and colour codes power plants so you can tell broadly whether they're burning fossil fuels like coal (high carbon intensity = red) or generating clean electricity using renewables (low carbon intensity = green).

The more you delve into it, the more interesting stuff you find. Did you know, for example, that the South American continent gets 80 per cent of its electricity from Hydro power? That's the kind of interesting bits of information that spring out at you. And, more locally to us, I can get a quick run-down on all the power stations, high and low carbon intensity, in Wales with a few clicks of the mouse.

By putting this information out there so accessibly, CARMA offers users the power to lever it to their own ends. So if you want to track down big polluters, or you want to see how the growth in renewables is going, go take a look. 

Link