According to a new analysis by Carbon Brief, the UK’s 2024 emissions fell by 3.6 percent and are now at the lowest level since 1872, when Queen Victoria was on the throne.
If you think that date is impressive, try this: The country’s coal use in 2024 was the lowest it’s been since 1666. “The largest factor in emissions falling last year… was a massive 54 percent drop in UK coal demand,” the Carbon Brief analysis said.
While UK emissions are currently 54 percent below 1990 levels, the other good news is that the country’s gross domestic product has increased by 84 percent.
Some of the major contributors to the reduction in coal use were the closure of the country’s last coal-fired power plant in Nottinghamshire, as well as Wales’ Port Talbot steelworks, one of the UK’s last blast furnaces.
An almost 40 percent increase in electric vehicles on UK roads was another contributing factor, along with above-average temperatures and electricity in the UK being the “cleanest ever” last year. “The UK’s right-leaning newspapers have been busy finding new driving-related wordplay for what they have misleadingly described as a ‘stalling’ market for EVs, which is apparently ‘going into reverse’,” the analysis said. “The reality is that the number of EVs on the UK’s road rose from 1m in 2023 to 1.4m in 2024, an increase of 39 percent in just one year. The number of plug-in hybrids was up 28 percent to 800,000.”
The report concluded that to reach its 2035 climate goal, as well as its target of net-zero by 2050, the UK’s emissions would need to be cut more each year than they were in 2024.