Carlton green wrote: ↑5 Oct 2022, 12:20am
As far as I know, and it was someone on this forum who produced the data, electricity consumption in the UK has fallen in recent years.
I'm pleased you've mentioned this since it's not widely realised that for all the bad news we're told about our use of energy, our consumption does appear to have peaked. It's not just our electricty consumption which has fallen but our use of all energy, not just in Britain but throughout developed nations. Efficiencies have improved, fuel prices have been more heavily taxed and there have been two massive economic shocks to slow the economy - in 2008, the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1920s, then the closure of much of the economy when people were told to stay in their homes through Covid-19.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... e_1920.xls
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... per_capita
Together with the massive shifts towards RE, this has helped clean up our local environment, even though transport energy consumption continues to rise.
However, what has characterised behaviour over the last few decades has been a big shift of manufacturing to China and the Far East where energy comes from a far worse mix of resources and pollution controls are very different from our own. Some have described our boasts of cleaner energy as very hypocritical given we choose to import so much based on nothing more than price.
According to The Guardian, more than hald of our carbon emissions come from abroad.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... rts-carbon