Map of the Week: How green is your valley?
I have been studying new data that shows which UK communities have the biggest and smallest carbon footprints.
So I can now see, for instance, that the good people of North Norfolk use almost twice as much electricity per head as their peers in Durham. And that the CO2 emissions of the average South Buckinghamshire resident are getting on for double those of someone living in the London borough of Camden.
It is a complex story - all kinds of reasons why one local authority's per capita footprint can be so different from another's - but I thought you might be interested in seeing how your neighbourhood shapes up.
The "total emissions" data in the map below includes industrial, domestic and road transport emissions of CO2.
Broadly, it suggests that the further north you go, the larger the individual carbon footprint. This is not particularly surprising - sparsely populated regions with a cooler climate and which are more reliant on cars will have greater energy needs per person. The band of red across the north of England coincides with Cumbria and the Yorkshire Dales. It also includes Redcar and Cleveland which has high industrial emissions and a relatively small population.
But the southern half of the UK presents a chequered picture, and I was intrigued to see whether part of the reason for the disparity was differences in behaviour among local people, as opposed to consequences of rural isolation, the presence of a big chemical plant or a busy motorway.
This map looks at domestic emissions only - ignoring roads and industry. The categories include electricity, gas, solid fuel and other energy consumption per capita.
This is how the government report describes it:
Emissions per resident vary least between areas for the domestic sector, and are dominated by gas and electricity consumption, for which real local data are available. Therefore these are perhaps the most interesting results, and although there are still minor problems with data quality, local fuel and energy use statistics continue to improve in accuracy and have been classified as National Statistics for the last two years. Domestic emissions here represent emissions from energy consumption in and around the home, including emissions attributable to the use of electricity, but not activities by private individuals elsewhere, such as personal travel.
The North/South divide is even more obvious now. Northern Ireland lacks a good gas supply network, so homes tend to use oil or solid fuel which means higher emissions. The same is true for rural parts of Scotland. But once again we have a big variation across England and Wales.
A couple of facts to emerge from the annual data released by the Department for Energy and Climate Change: the authority with the greatest percentage reduction in the domestic sector was Portsmouth with 6.6%; the largest percentage rise in emissions from the domestic sector was for the Shetland Islands with 2.1%.
To understand how neighbouring authorities could have such different results, I thought I would pull out the figures for electricity consumption alone. There are confounding factors, but it might be that we can see different behaviours in similar places. Who is more assiduous at turning off lights? Where is the TV left on standby?
No map for this, I am afraid, but you can interrogate the data on this spreadsheet [829Kb MS Excel] if you wish.
Looking at electricity consumption per capita, then, here are 20 places to consider.
I was struck that, comparing central London boroughs (see the spreadsheet), wealthier neighbourhoods use more electricity per capita than poorer ones. So the parts of the capital with the smallest electricity footprint are relatively deprived authorities like Newham, Camden and Hackney, scoring 0.9 or less.
Better-off boroughs like Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea and Richmond score 1.1 to 1.2. The City of London at 1.7 seems very high since the data purports to measure only domestic electricity emissions, but the population is calculated at just 8,000 people which may skew the results.(Or maybe they are all billionaire bankers with three fridges to keep their Bolly cold.) Why such a big difference between Durham and Dundee? Ideas welcome.
Finally, I thought the map on road transport emissions might be of interest.
I suspect that the motorway and trunk road network, particularly when it runs through less heavily populated areas, plays a big part in shaping this map. The ring around London looks like the M25 with the M1 and A1 heading northwards from it. The M5 may explain the red line from the West Country up to the spaghetti of motorways in the west Midlands. The Yorkshire Dales are marked out in red, presumably because of the reliance on cars to get about in a thinly populated area and the existence of key transport routes to and from Scotland.
To try and extract the commercial traffic and focus on local private car use, I have got emissions data for petrol vehicles using minor roads. Again, you can see the full data in the spreadsheet.
Here are a few examples.
The difficulty, as with all this data, is that there so many variables - population density, road network, public transport infrastructure. But I think it is still interesting that Lincoln residents drive their petrol-powered cars on minor roads more than three times as much as the people of Chichester. And that drivers in Belfast use minor roads eight times much as residents in Omagh.
What some in government hope is that by encouraging local authorities to question the size of their carbon footprint in comparison to other similar councils, it will inspire healthy competition which will, in turn, help reduce emissions.
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Off peak electricity used to be very cheap in Scotland with very little premium on the peak rate for dual meters. This encouraged a lot more use of storage heaters than in England. It could account for some of the difference in energy consumption. With two big nuclear AGR power stations the SSEB had a mamoth base load to deal with so that they had a strong incentive to sell their nightime power.
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So what practical use will be made of this data ? Let me see - how about a local tax, perhaps a supplementary charge on Council Tax, calculated on the amount of CO2 emissions in your area. Another climate change tax coming to your area soon, folks. Caledonian Comment
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Maybe one reason for more electricity use in certain touristy island populations might be people leaving their lights on for security reasons because its their vacation home or possibly people growing marijuana in a more secluded area.
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Also Mark, did you consider places like Durham where there are large universities where the electricity might be included in the tuition cost?
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Waste is wrong. For example, using MY tax money to pay YOU to collect figures that will never, ever be put to any practical use at all.
Do you have a point to make, Mark? It escapes me.
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Very interesting, Mark
although I'm not really sure of the point of this - fairly obviously remote, rural and colder areas use more energy, the wealthy are more liberal with their power consumption, and the biggest roads in the country produce most emissions - hardly rocket science
But where do we go from here? The only area I can see for reducing these figures through some sort of competition is household electricity use - which is a personal choice - the rest of the figures are influenced by physical factors - i.e. where the roads are, public transport, weather, settlement size etc - hardly people's fault for having the M1 run through their district is it? It's interesting, but I don't really see what we can do with it
Maybe we could install futurama-style tubes to take us across the Dales or East Anglia
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Bah more sillyness carbon this carbon that its very old and boring.
Towns are naturally warmer less fuel to heat a town cottages and remote areas are colder so they cost more to heat.. but then remote areas have less traffic carbon than cities.
The answer is Hemcrete all structures built out of it have a natural inside air temp of 13deg. no heating required. you can also build cars out of the other bits see lotus Eco.
Mark this is just more failure to see what nature provides us because were all scared silly of hemp.
all your figures show is who uses energy nothing else really do Mr and Mrs city banker have micro generation to cool their bubbly what energy rating is this fridge bet its a or A+ unlike surrounding areas were the working class works who in all probability have bought A fridge it was cheap it fitted and was a C- D rating and will never afford micro generation unless grant funded by the government or energy company, if so don't these graphs and figures just try to show Eco greed.
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So we have someone in rural cumbria - 10 miles to the nearest shop (it shuts next week), bus once a week on Tuesday, nearest job 25 miles away, no choice but use a car if they want to work.
We have someone in London - 200 yards to the nearest shop, buses every two minutes, underground on every corner, 100s of jobs within a 1 mile radius.
Surprise, suprise - the privileged landanas use less fuel to travel around.
How long is it going to take before it sinks in with the BBC - some people can't work, can't get to the shop, can't get to the GP, can't see their family etc etc without a car.
We don't all live in London or within half a mile of a commuter station heading to London.
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It's not at all surprising that more affluent areas use more electricity than poorer areas.
How much of the overall variation can be explained by this? Is there actually much significant variation left once you have accounted for how well off people are in the different areas?
The only other thing that I would expect to contribute to the north-south divide is that it's colder up north, so I would expect an area up north with similar income to an area down south to use more gas and electricity just to keep warm.
But it would be interesting to know if there are any other main sources of variation.
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The message is simple; this map is a microcosm of the globe, conservation and minimising emissions is for poor people.
"And again I say to you: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven".
Let's press on with boiling camels, or find some other, least inconvenient, way that will do the trick?
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The global warming sceptics will love this. They have always suspected that crofters and cottagers in rural areas, using a car to travel to the nearest town 15 miles away are causing more pollution than Londoners stuck in traffic jams for hours every day and working in lit up offices in the City. I suppose the conclusion will be to repeat the 19th century clearances of the offenders.
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Mark,
How do Lincoln residents emit 4.9 tonnes CO2 each on minor petrol road transport, when their TOTAL road transport emissions are only 0.7t per capita (the third lowest, with a dark blue dot on the map)?
...well that will be because you inverted the calculation and have shown the number of people it takes to emit a tonne of CO2.
Otherwise, if you look at the data by region, the big variation in emissions is in the Industrial, Commercial & Public sector - from NE England 8.2 and Wales 6.5, to Greater London 2.7 (UK 3.9 - all figures tonnes CO2 per capita). Road Transport goes from Northern Ireland 2.9 to Greater London 1.2 (UK 2.2) and Domestic from NI 3.3 to Greater London 2.1 (UK 2.4).
Also the Local Authority data for Northern Ireland includes pro-rata distribution of the electricity emissions.
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How many politicians have two homes and leave electrical equipment on stand by using one third of the normal use power or leave lights on because they realise the police can't catch house breakers. But how many green politicians do the same, one politician needs one room perhaps the tories and labour could flat share they already argue like an old couple and spend our money like political retail therapy.
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I would be interested to know the standard deviation within each local authority as well (i.e. does everyone emit roughly the same amount, or are there significant disparities within each area)
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So, the north has a larger carbon footprint than the south - no surprises there really. As a northerner living in the south, I can see the reasons why, and they as wide and varied as are the methods to combat it.
You can't compare apples with pears - there are many variables that contribute to the differing statistics.
SE England, and the big city / metropolis in particular shows up good against the rest of the country, and considering the population density in that part of the world, it is surprising. The thing about London though is that many people live in high density housing - high rise to studio / bedsit land. Is that a contributing factor? How many appliances can you have if you only have one or two rooms? Many homes are gas heated and greener fuels / electrification have their contributions too.
I live in South Bucks - as highlighted by Mark as a region coming up for double the CO2 emissions of Camden. South Bucks is green - fields, meadows and parkland with a few villages spotted around, so I find this result surprising. We do have the M25 / M4 / M40 cutting right through our county, close to where I live, and whenever I get close to the intersections, it's gridlock, particularly the M25 / M4. We also have Pinewood Studios in South Bucks - I'm guessing they use a lot of electricity - likely as much in the studios as the entire Iver area (where Pinewood is located) put together.
Living outside of greater London is more difficult to get around if you don't have a car - many people who live in the capital don't use a car - finding it easier to commute by train / tube / bus. If all 8,000,000 londoners took to the road at 8am every day - imagine the M4 corridor - you'd just be getting into town in time to wave at your colleagues heading home.
I've recently taken my car off the road and I'm getting the train to work each day. It's an experiment while I'm looking for a new car - but my journey now takes me a whole hour whereas driving took me 15 minutes, door to door. Now I have to include 35 minutes of walking as well as the time waiting / sitting on the train, so it's not really a good replacement.
Where you save with one hand, you lose with the other.
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It is my experience that it those who are well off that waste most energy with lights left on in every room, multiple TV sets and computers left on often unwatched / unattended . Those on low income can’t afford to waste energy and if they pay by payment card are punished even more.
Energy should be sold in bands, first X units at 5p, next x at 10p, next at 20p and so on. This would help the low income homes and would focus the minds of those who have too much money to care.
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