Saturday, February 2, 2008

Stuff dominates!

I used to summarise British energy consumption by saying "transport, heating, electricity".
However I just read Too Good To Be True? The UK's Climate Change Record,
(pdf) by Dieter Helm, Robin Smale and Jonathan Phillips, who estimate (based on the value of British imports from other countries, and those countries' carbon intensities) that the net carbon footprint of British imports and exports is 10 tonnes of CO2e per person! - this doubles the British carbon footprint at a stroke and implies that our energy consumption is not dominated by transport, heating, and electricity after all. Stuff is king!