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@jwildeboer shares the good news that EU greenhouse gas emissions are -37% below 1990 levels.
Then gets a thread full of Eeyores responding that it must be due to delocalisation of industry to China or something.
No man, it ain’t, and it can’t possibly be. It’s mostly the shift from coal power to renewables and nuclear, as well as some energy efficiency, for instance in buildings.
A few relevant links below
First, industrial emissions are roughly 20% of EU emissions. And we’re still a major industrial exporting power. Losing a bit of industry to more polluting countries cannot possibly explain -37% reductions. This is an order of magnitude off.
Also, as ghg-efficient net exporters we might as well credit ourselves for reducing emissions in less efficient imports countries.
Now it’s pretty hard to estimate the embedded emissions of say, your iPhone, with components from two dozen countries.
But I recall a modelling based estimate on page 265 of our (the European Commission’s) climate neutrality strategy from 2018.
If counting emissions of Chinese imports, our reductions in 2016 would have been a bit less. If we credit our export surplus for reducing emissions elsewhere, it was more!
The recent gas price crisis due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine might actually have reduced industrial production somewhat. Those are not the kind of reductions we want.
But on the whole, it’s still a good news story: coal fired power plants are on the way out and being replaced by renewables, energy efficiency has improved.
Obviously other sectors are more challenging but EVs give me much hope for road transport.
https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/climate-strategies-targets/progress-climate-action_en
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