United Kingdom's environmental policies

Historical and Political Context

The United Kingdom is composed of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. England and Wales were united in 1536. Scotland was joined to its two neighboring countries, England and Wales, in 1707. Ireland became part of the nation in 1801 but many Irish opposed the union due to England's longstanding history of oppression and colonization in Ireland. After a successful war of independence during the late 1910s and early 1920s, the Anglo-Irish Treaty created the Irish Free State, and in 1922 six northern counties recognized as Northern Ireland became part of the United Kingdom. Each of the countries has maintained a certain amount of political autonomy, especially in the area of legislative control.

In the thirteenth century, Great Britain evolved its parliamentary form of government. This system, composed of the monarch, a House of Lords, and a House of Commons, has become the model for the governments of many nations throughout the world. In the fifteenth century, Great Britain began exploring the world and claiming new lands. The United Kingdom has played a major role globally throughout its history. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the United Kingdom was an important seafaring power and one of the major colonizing countries in the world. The United Kingdom’s preeminence as a colonial power (the British Empire) continued into the following centuries, as did its power on the seas.

The eighteenth century was the period in which two world-significant revolutions began in the United Kingdom: the agricultural revolution and the Industrial Revolution. Both were made possible by scientific discoveries and inventions and each transformed its specific economic sector. The agricultural revolution changed methods of farming as crop rotation, improved machinery, and scientific breeding, as well as other innovations, were introduced.

The Industrial Revolution changed manufacturing of goods and created a new lifestyle for workers. New machines improved production, first of textiles and then of all types of products, and led to the building of factories and mass production. This increase in the amount of goods produced required more and better means of transport and provided the impetus for the building of railroads and more roads and canals in the country. Britain’s revolutionized economic system soon began to spread to and industrialize the European continent.

By the early nineteenth century, the United Kingdom was the strongest and most influential European power. With industrial development in the United States and Germany, the nation lost some of its position but remained economically important. The world wars of the twentieth century and the damage suffered by the United Kingdom placed it in a position of rebuilding during the late 1940s.

The United Kingdom, like the rest of the war-torn European countries, regained its economic and political importance during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1949, the United Kingdom joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The United Kingdom has close economic and political ties with both the United States and the continental European countries. It was one of the founding members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which was formed in 1959. In 1973, the United Kingdom became a member of the European Economic Community (EEC) and a founding member of the G-8 in 1977.

The United Kingdom was a member of the European Union (EU) from its founding until it left during the process known as Brexit, which was endorsed by United Kingdom voters in a 2016 referendum and finalized in early 2020 after years of negotiations. Worldwide, the United Kingdom was the sixth-largest global economy in 2023 and played a major role in global trade.

Impact of British Policies on Climate Change

The United Kingdom has implemented a number of policies to positively affect the world’s climate and to reduce the amount of detrimental climate change. One of its main concerns is the increase in temperature, which threatens to result in erratic weather patterns producing severe storms and a significant rise in sea level. This could result in disastrous ice melting in the Arctic and reduction of fish populations due to increased water temperature. The government is particularly targeting the areas of energy production and consumption, transport, and agriculture with incentives and regulations to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

One of the major programs was the Renewables Obligation, introduced in April 2002. This program requires energy suppliers who supply electricity to end-consumers to use renewable resources, not fossil fuels, to generate a certain set amount of the electricity. The projected requirement incorporates a yearly increase in the amount of electricity to be generated from renewable resources through 2015. The starting percentage in 2002 of 2 percent will increase to 15.4 percent by 2015. The program also required the coal-firing of biomass to be eliminated by 2016. Through various programs, the United Kingdom provided money for the installation of renewable energy sources in private homes and community buildings. In 2010 the conclusion of the Renewables Obligation was pushed out from 2027 to 2037.

Concern over climate change and commitment to work actively to stop detrimental climate change has not been limited to the national level of government in the United Kingdom. As early as 2000 with the creation of documents such as the Nottingham Declaration, local governmental units and private citizens were becoming involved in programs and activities related to climate change. The Nottingham Declaration, when signed by a local council, committed them to support the national programs and to work locally to reduce GHG emissions and factors producing negative effects on climate.

These local efforts continued in subsequent decades; for example, by the early 2020s the city of London, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in the world, had repeatedly expressed its commitment to a carbon-neutral future. By 2020 the city had reduced its CO₂ emissions by 38 percent of 1990 levels, despite significant economic and population growth during the same time period.

The United Kingdom as a GHG Emitter

During the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the United Kingdom made efforts to meet its own climate goals as well as those set by international climate agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol. According to data collected by the European Environment Agency (EEA), the United Kingdom ranked second in GHG emissions in both the EU15 and the EU27 in 2006. Ranked by GHG emissions per capita, the nation ranked tenth among the EU15 and thirteenth among the EU27. However, the United Kingdom reduced its GHG emissions by 16 percent, while the European Union achieved an average of 2.7 percent reduction in GHG emissions. The United Kingdom’s 2006 emissions of 652.3 million metric tons were 18 percent below those of its base year (1990) which were 776.3 million metric tons and also a greater reduction than its burden-sharing target of -12.5 percent.

The United Kingdom continued to reduce CO₂ emissions throughout the 2010s, with emissions falling almost every year between 2001 and 2020. By 2022 these emissions had fallen to 417.1 millions of metric tons of CO₂ equivalent. In 2021 the United Kingdom ranked seventeenth worldwide in CO₂ emissions.

Summary and Foresight

The United Kingdom is one of the world’s largest consumers of energy. In 2007, according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the country ranked eighth in the world for GHG emissions from the burning of fossil fuels with some 587,261 metric tons.

The country is working to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy resources. The United Kingdom has significantly reduced its GHG emissions. During the twenty-first century it made significant reductions in emissions from household use and from petroleum refining. However, the production of electricity and heat at times led to a rise in emissions. The Renewables Obligation program, enacted in 2002, sought to address this issue. In addition, the use of natural gas rather than coal as an energy source helped reduce emissions. GHG emissions from transport continued to increase at a steady rate. The United Kingdom took steps to stop this rate of increase by implementing a program requiring the use of fuel that contains a percentage of either bioethanol or biodiesel.

The United Kingdom continued to play a committed role in the efforts to reduce GHG emissions and positively affect climate change by minimizing temperature increase. The United Kingdom signed the Kyoto Protocol, a comprehensive United Nations climate agreement adopted in 1997, and accepted the commitment to reduction of GHG emissions to 12.5 percent below the levels of the base year (1990). In view of the amount of GHGs being produced within its borders, the United Kingdom, fearing it would not meet its target, began considering an emissions regulatory system to apply to itself.

In 2000, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution presented its conclusion that if the United Kingdom, and other countries as well, would accept a target of a reduction of 60 percent by 2050 holding emissions to 550 parts per million, the rise in temperature could be held to 2° Celsius. Then in 2005, an assessment of GHG emissions presented at the international conference Avoiding dangerous climate change proposed that a greater reduction was necessary to limit the rise in temperature to 2° Celsius. The report stated that the emissions had to be held to less than 400 parts per million. An 80 percent reduction rather than a 60 percent reduction would be necessary.

In response to this evidence, the United Kingdom turned its attention to enacting a law that would target a significant reduction in GHG emissions, set in place mechanisms of regulation, and enable the country to become a low-carbon economy. Political conservatives and liberals, the Confederation of British Industry, and the Trade Unions Congress all supported the bill. On November 26, 2008, the Climate Change Act became law. It set the reduction target for the United Kingdom at 80 percent below the base year level by 2050. It also gave the ministers authority to enact various measures to ensure that the target is met. The United Kingdom was the first nation to pass a law regulating carbon emissions reduction and providing the means to achieve the target set.

Throughout the 2010s the United Kingdom continued to pursue initiatives intended to reduce CO₂ emissions. During this time policies were guided by local laws, EU policies (until the United Kingdom withdrew from the EU starting in the late 2010s), and international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocols. In 2015 the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) organized another international climate treaty, known as the Paris Agreement, which was intended to limit the rise in mean global temperature to below 2 °C (3.6 °F) above pre-industrial levels. The United Kingdom ratified the Paris Agreement in 2016; under this treaty, the country was supposed to slash emissions by 68 percent of 1990 levels by 2030.

However, despite some growth in the green energy sector and declining emissions overall, by the early 2020s many observers predicted that the United Kingdom was not on track to meet its 2030 goals. These concerns grew more pronounced in September 2023, when the United Kingdom government approved a slate of new oil and gas projects in the North Sea intended to increase domestic energy production, control energy costs for United Kingdom consumers, and reduce dependency on foreign energy sources. That same month Rishi Sunak, who was prime minister of the United Kingdom at that time, also walked back some of the United Kingdom's climate goals; for example, he delayed the planned ban on the sale of new gas and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035 and also extended the planned phasing out of gas boilers by nine years, meaning this phase-out would also take effect in 2035. Ministers in Sunak's own government conceded that this would make it more difficult for the United Kingdom to meet its legally-binding climate goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

Key Facts

• Population: 68,138,484 (2023 estimate)
• Area: 244,820 square kilometers
• Gross domestic product (GDP): US$3.66 trillion (purchasing power parity, 2022 estimate, World Bank)
• Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e): 776.3 in 1990; approximately 725 in 1995; 659.3 in 2004; 652.3 in 2006; 417.1 in 2022
• Kyoto Protocol status: Ratified 2002
• Paris Agreement status Ratified 2016

Bibliography

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Faure, Michael, and Marjean Peeters, eds. Climate Change and European Emissions Trading. Edward Elgar, 2009.

Glover, Leigh. Postmodern Climate Change. Routledge, 2006.

Kirka, Danica, and Jill Lawless. “Britain Approves New North Sea Oil Drilling in Welcome News for the Industry But Not Activists.” AP News, 27 Sep. 2023, apnews.com/article/uk-north-sea-oil-gas-drilling-82062b0105baf4cfd6f45044f904e0e9. Accessed 10 Dec. 2024.

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Ritchie, Hannah, and Max Roser. "United Kingdom: CO2 Country Profile." Our World in Data, 2022, ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom. Accessed 10 Dec. 2024.