A ray of British sunshine pierces the climate doom

It's a relief to come across any trend toward safety and sanity these days, especially a sharp and sustained trend. So, let’s take a little mental health break and look at the latest update on climate pollution out of the U.K.

The U.K.’s planet-heating emissions are now the lowest since 1872. That’s not a typo — we’re looking back to a time when Queen Victoria was on the throne, in the place where coal furnaces had fired the industrial revolution. The year 1872 lands smack in the middle of the baseline period that scientists use to measure carbon pollution “relative to the pre-industrial era.”

So, the symbolism is significant: the birthplace of the industrial revolution has now cut its greenhouse gas emissions back down to levels not seen for over 150 years. And the drop in coal burning is even more striking, dwindling to its lowest level since 1666.

It’s worth pausing for a moment to consider what it means to cut climate pollution back to 1872 levels. Just think of what happened during that period: Edison switched on the lightbulb and cities powered up; drillers struck gushers, ushering in the age of oil; cars were invented; agriculture went industrial; economies grew and population boomed — there are more than twice as many people in the U.K. than in 1872 and its economy is 20 times larger.

Carbon pollution is back to the level when Queen Victoria had to be hauled around by horse and yet, “we haven’t lost any modernity,” Bryony Worthington told me this week. Worthington was a key architect of the U.K. Climate Change Act, and she describes the U.K.’s progress as “a true transition and a very symbolic one — the home of the industrial revolution is showing what’s possible.” 

The latest U.K. numbers were crunched by Carbon Brief and here’s the graphic that broke through the doomscrolling this week:

Moving on from the broad sweep of history, what really stands out on that chart is the steep drop in fossil fuel pollution over recent years. You probably know that the internationally agreed starting line for climate action is pegged at 1990. Since then, the U.K. has cut its emissions by more than half (54 per cent). It’s the biggest cut by any major country in the world.

Back in 1990, the U.K. was the sixth largest economy in the world and spewed over 800 million tonnes of CO2 per year. It cut emissions in half, and it remains the sixth largest economy in the world. In fact its economy almost doubled in size over that time, growing by 84 per cent.

One of the criticisms of this kind of analysis is that it doesn’t account for imported carbon pollution and that countries can effectively “offshore” polluting industries. In the case of the U.K. those kind of “consumption-based” emissions did increase until 2007, but have since been tracking downwards along with domestic emissions. 

So, what has the U.K. been doing?

The folks at Carbon Brief identify several important factors. Phasing out coal-fired electricity was a big one and the last coal plant closed down last year. And now, natural gas is also being replaced. Fossil-fired power generation has fallen by half in the past decade while renewables have doubled. Wind power is set to overtake natural gas this year.

Electricity is a big part of the story but not the only one. While the biggest cuts have come in the electricity sector, the U.K. has made progress everywhere, cutting emissions by more than a third across the rest of the economy as well.

Oil demand is one of the most stubborn problems since it supplies gasoline and diesel for all kinds of transportation. But now it, too, is falling because of improvements in fuel efficiency and the rise of EVs. In addition to 76,000 electric vans, “the number of EVs on the U.K.’s roads rose from 1 million in 2023 to 1.4 million in 2024, an increase of 39 per cent in just one year,” notes CarbonBrief.

One of the most important factors is that ongoing pollution cuts have been sustained by legally binding carbon budgets. The Climate Change Act requires Parliament to agree to five-year carbon budgets and, crucially, the budgets must be set many years ahead of time, beyond the horizon of any politician’s term in office. The latest one is being worked out now and it’s for the period 2038-2042.

“The Climate Change Act is what’s kept progress consistent over the last two decades,” says Worthington. “The act meant the government had to keep taking [climate policy] seriously, even when the political winds or governments change. We’re almost 20 years in, we’re making extraordinary progress and the transition is getting to the point where people are seeing financial savings now.”

The Carbon Brief analysts came to the same conclusion, finding that EV drivers saved around £1.7 billion (CAD $3 billion) in fuel costs in 2024, averaging at least £800 (CAD $1,400) per vehicle per year. 

The Canadian government hasn’t adopted a carbon budgeting system. But its official “Net Zero Advisory Body” has been urging the feds to implement one. 

Intriguingly, it’s a system Mark Carney knows very well from his time in the U.K. And you wonder if a new federal government might be more open to importing stricter accountability rules to get Canada’s carbon pollution onto a steep downward path.