Britain has deindustrialised more than it has decarbonised so to tackle climate change we should invest abroad - Chris Hocknell
British climate policy is under increasing pressure and for good reason. Eye-watering investments are delivering increasingly lower returns in terms of real carbon reductions. It’s time the government realises that British pounds will often reduce far more carbon emissions if spent abroad.
We boast that we have halved our emissions since 1990. This is a misleading half truth; we have deindustrialised more than we have decarbonised. Heavy industry and manufacturing has mostly left British shores and the UK becomes more ever-more dependent on its London-based, professional service economy.
The picture of British decarbonisation is very different if we consider our imported, or ‘consumed’ carbon. This is all the carbon that has been emitted in the process of creating and transporting the T-shirts, TVs and toasters that we import from abroad.
The Office of National Statistics suggests that consumption based emissions are 30 per cent to 40 per cent higher than our territorial emissions. We now import almost everything, and the countries we import our goods from often have far lower environmental standards.
For example, more than seven million bricks were imported from Pakistan in 2022. Each brick created 1kg/CO2, compared with a 0.52 kg for the average brick from the EU. This is because many bricks are fired in older kilns and plants that emit higher levels of carbon. Bricks created in the EU, on the other hand, use more efficient kilns and cleaner energy sources. Under the current domestic ‘carbon budget’ approach to managing emissions, these emissions are not counted on our balance sheet.
This is why we need to focus on Carbon Efficiency over territorial carbon budgets. Carbon dioxide is indifferent to the border from which it was emitted. We should be too.
Focusing on improving our global ‘Carbon Efficiency’ is the best way to encourage continued emission reductions. It grants us a truly global metric upon which we can judge ourselves, our countries and our industries.
In Britain, the deeper the decarbonisation, the more exponentially expensive each kg of carbon becomes to eliminate. Foreign investments would deliver greater real carbon reductions per pound spent. A £5bn investment in Pakistan’s brick manufacturing technology would reduce Britain’s consumed carbon far more than, say, costly and complex physical overhauls to our entire electrical grid.
Investing in and supporting the rollout of cleaner technologies amongst our trading partners would come with geopolitical benefits too. Investing in more resilient, decarbonised supply chains and companies would not only benefit our own trade security. It could help us to become the truly global Britain that we claim to be.
Initiatives like the Partnering for Accelerated Climate Transitions already hint at this approach. However, this initiative could be dramatically scaled up and targeted at domestic trading patterns. In today’s cash-strapped Britain, we have to ask ourselves how we can make the biggest carbon impact with the limited funds we have.
Fundamentally, we need to change the way we think about our emissions. Lowering our carbon consumption should become our primary focus. Investing our trading partner’s Carbon Efficiency will deliver a much higher climate impact for the money spent, accumulate future-proofed assets and give us access to new IP and industries that have long abandoned UK shores.
That’s why the UK should consider consumption and efficiency-based targets in our national carbon strategy. Technology transfer and investment towards our trading partners could be an ecological, economic and political win for a Britain trying to reassert its place in the new world order.
Chris Hocknell is a director at Eight Versa Sustainability Consultancy.