The UK’s greenhouse gas emissions fell by 5.7% in 2023 to their lowest level since 1879, according to new Carbon Brief analysis.
The last time UK emissions were this low, Queen Victoria was on the throne, Benjamin Disraeli was prime minister, Mosley Street in Newcastle became the first road in the world with electric lighting and 59 people died in the Tay Bridge disaster in Dundee.
Carbon Brief’s analysis, based on preliminary government energy data, shows emissions fell to just 383m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2023. This is the first time they have dropped below 400MtCO2e since Victorian times.
Other key findings from the analysis include:
- The UK’s emissions are now 53% below 1990 levels, while GDP has grown by 82%.
- The drop in emissions in 2023 was largely due to an 11% fall in gas demand. This was due to higher electricity imports after the French nuclear fleet recovered, above-average temperatures and weak underlying demand driven by high prices.
- Gas demand would have fallen even faster, but for a 15% fall in UK nuclear output.
- Coal use fell by 23% in 2023 to its lowest level since the 1730s, as all but one of the UK’s remaining coal-fired power stations closed down.
- Transport was the single-largest sector in terms of emissions, followed by buildings industry, agriculture and electricity generation. The electricity sector likely dropped below agriculture for the first time.
While the 23MtCO2e reduction in 2023 was faster than the 14MtCO2e per year average needed to reach net-zero by 2050, it was mostly unrelated to deliberate climate action. The UK will need to address emissions from buildings, transport, industry and agriculture to reach its 2050 target.
The analysis is the latest in a long-running series of annual estimates from Carbon Brief, covering emissions during 2022, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014.
Lowest since 1879
The UK’s territorial greenhouse gas emissions – those that occur within the country’s borders – have now fallen in 25 of the 34 years since 1990.
(Consumption-based emissions, including CO2 embedded in imported goods and services, were increasing until 2007, but have since fallen at a similar rate to territorial emissions.)
Apart from brief rebounds after the global financial crisis and the Covid-19 lockdowns, UK emissions have fallen during every year for the past two decades.
The latest 23MtCO2e (5.7%) reduction in 2023 takes UK emissions down to 383MtCO2e, according to Carbon Brief’s new analysis.
This is the lowest since 1879 – outside the 1926 general strike – as shown in the figure below.
Having dropped to a then-record low for the modern era of 404MtCO2e during the height of Covid in 2020, UK emissions bounced back in 2021 as the economy reopened.
While emissions declined in 2022, they remained above 2020 levels. In 2023, however, emissions fell below the lows seen during Covid lockdowns, to levels not seen since Victorian times.
Accidental action
The biggest contributor to the drop in UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 was an 11% reduction in gas demand, which accounted for around two-thirds of last year’s overall decline. This took the UK’s gas demand to its lowest level since the 1980s.
However, the drop in 2023 was not primarily due to deliberate climate action.
The figure below shows the estimated actual drop in emissions in red, followed by contributions from a series of factors that decreased emissions, in blue, and other factors in grey.
The most significant factor was the UK returning to its long-term position as a net electricity importer in 2023, reducing demand for domestically generated power from gas by more than 20%.
This followed an anomalous year in 2022, when the UK was a net exporter for the first time ever, as a result of widespread outages in the French nuclear fleet.
Lower demand for gas power accounted for more than two-thirds of the fall in gas use overall.
Next, above-average temperatures reduced the need for heating, while continuing very high prices since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused weak underlying demand for gas.
Reflecting both of these factors, there was a 6% drop in domestic demand in 2023, accounting for a fifth of the overall decline in gas consumption. A similar 7% drop in commercial demand for gas accounted for another tenth of the total, with a 5% drop in industrial demand the remainder.
Finally, the figure shows that there was a small reduction in gas demand and associated CO2 emissions as a result of increased wind and solar generation.
The impact of rising wind and solar capacity in 2023 was muted by average windspeeds being below average and the average number of sun hours falling sharply compared with 2022.
The UK’s emissions would have fallen even further in 2023 if not for a 15% decline in the output of the nation’s nuclear fleet. This followed the closure in 2022, of the Hunterston B station in Scotland and the Hinkley Point B plant in Somerset, as well as maintenance outages.
The decline in 2023 means UK nuclear output fell to the lowest level since the early 1980s. Following the site closures in 2022, the UK only has five operational nuclear power plants remaining, all but one of which – Sizewell B in Suffolk – are due to close this decade.
Out of coal
After gas, the next-largest driver of falling UK emissions in 2023 was coal, accounting for around 14% of the overall drop in emissions.
The decline of coal use in the UK – for homes, railways, factories and power stations – is a major part of the long-term reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the past 30 years.
Factors in this long-term decline include controls on domestic coal burning to limit air pollution, the end of steam railways, the shift from coal-based “town gas” to “natural” gas from the North Sea, the deindustrialisation of the 1970s and the “dash for gas” of the 1990s.
More recently, coal demand has dropped precipitously as the rapid build-out of renewable sources of electricity has combined with falling demand and carbon pricing that favours gas.
The figure below shows how UK coal demand surged during the industrial revolution before levelling off through the 20th century, barring general strikes in 1921 and 1926.
Coal demand has been falling steadily since the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1956, in response to London’s “great smog” of 1952. In 2023, UK coal demand fell by another 23% to the lowest level since the 1730s, when George II was on the throne and Robert Walpole was prime minister.
The recent reduction of coal demand is largely down to the demise of coal power, which made up around 40% of the UK’s electricity generation as recently as 2012. Coal power output has fallen by 97% over the past decade, accounting for 87% of the fall in UK coal demand overall.
In 2023, only 1% of the UK’s electricity came from coal, with three coal-fired plants closing down: the coal units at Drax in Yorkshire; Kilroot in Northern Ireland; and West Burton A in Lincolnshire.
As of the start of October 2023, only one coal plant remains – the Ratcliffe-on-Soar site in Nottinghamshire. Operator Uniper plans to close Ratcliffe in September 2024, ahead of the government’s deadline to end coal power by October 2024.
Sectoral shifts
The reductions in gas use for power and building heat, as well as the fall in coal use for power, further cemented the transport sector as the largest contributor to UK emissions in 2023.
This is shown in the figure below, which highlights how transport emissions have barely changed over the past several decades as more efficient cars have been offset by increased traffic.
The power sector was the largest contributor to the UK’s emissions until 2014. In 2023, it was likely only the fifth-largest below transport, buildings, industry and – for the first time – also agriculture.
As of 2023, transport emissions were only around 10% below 1990 levels and made up nearly a third of the UK’s overall total. There are now more than a million electric vehicles (EVs) on the UK’s road, which will have avoided around 2MtCO2e of annual emissions.
However, the government has also frozen or cut fuel duty every year since 2010, rather than increasing it in line with inflation, adding up to around 20MtCO2e to the UK’s total.
Emissions from buildings – chiefly for heating and cooling – are the second-largest contributor to the UK’s emissions, accounting for around a fifth of the total.
They were around one-third lower than 1990 levels in 2023, with improved insulation and boiler regulations making the UK’s buildings more efficient to heat.
Efficiency improvements dried up around a decade ago and the fall in building emissions since 2021 has been driven by high prices suppressing demand, rather than deliberate policy choices.
Industrial emissions made up an estimated tenth of the UK’s total in 2023, having fallen by two-thirds since 1990 and by a quarter in the past decade.
In common with many other developed economies, the UK shifted from heavy industry towards advanced manufacturing and services from the 1970s onwards. However, industrial energy efficiency improvements and a shift to lower-carbon fuels are also part of the picture.
Agricultural emissions have barely changed for decades, making up just over a tenth of the UK’s total in 2023 and having fallen just 12% since 1990 as livestock herds have shrunk.
There was a small decrease in farm emissions in 2022 as the energy crisis filtered through into surging prices for fertilisers. For the figure above, Carbon Brief assumes the reduced fertiliser use in 2022 continued in 2023, as fertiliser prices only eased in summer 2023.
Decoupling emissions
The drop in UK emissions in 2023 came as the economy flatlined, growing by just 0.4% on 2022 levels. The UK’s emissions are now 53% below 1990 levels while the economy has grown 82%.
This “decoupling” of emissions from economic growth is shown in the figure below. As noted above, this analysis is based on territorial emissions within the UK’s borders.
Consumption-based emissions including imported goods and services were climbing in the early part of this century. However, emissions cuts over the past two decades have been very largely driven by sectors that cannot easily be “outsourced”, particularly power and building heat.
The UK is now in a mild recession and the economy is only expected to grow by around 1% in 2024. Recent trends in the “emissions intensity” of the UK economy – the emissions per unit of GDP – and weak economic growth suggests that emissions could continue to fall in 2024.
On the other hand, gas and oil prices are easing to pre-crisis levels, while above-average temperatures may not continue for another year. Petrol demand rose by nearly 5% in 2023 as traffic continued to rebound from the pandemic – and jet fuel use similarly climbed by 16%.
Moreover, the one-off impact of the UK returning to net electricity imports has now unwound. As such, further emissions cuts in 2024 are far from guaranteed.
Target practise
While the UK has made rapid progress in cutting its territorial emissions since 1990, it remains only around halfway to reaching its net-zero target for 2050, as the chart figure shows.
Emissions fell by 23MtCO2e in 2023, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis. This is faster than the 14MtCO2e reduction needed every year for the next quarter-century to reach net-zero by 2050.
However, with only one coal-fired power station remaining and the power sector overall now likely only the fifth-largest contributor to UK emissions, the country will need to start cutting into gas power and looking to other sectors, if it is to continue making progress towards its targets.
This will mean expanding wind and solar capacity to reduce gas use, while retaining gas-fired power stations for periods of low wind and starting to build low-carbon alternatives, such as gas with carbon capture and storage, long-term energy storage or hydrogen-fired turbines.
Emissions from road transport and buildings will be key areas if the UK is to progress, which is why changes to government plans around electric vehicles and heat pumps could be problematic.
Similarly, a government decision to “carry forward” the “surplus” emissions cuts from earlier years – largely due to external events such as Covid – would severely weaken UK targets at a time when continued ambition is needed, to stay on track for medium- and long-term climate goals.
Methodology
The starting point for Carbon Brief’s analysis of UK greenhouse gas emissions is preliminary government estimates of energy use by fuel. These are published quarterly, with the final quarter of each year appearing in figures published at the end of the following February. The same approach has accurately estimated year-to-year changes in emissions in previous years (see table, below).
One large source of uncertainty is the provisional energy use data, which is revised at the end of March each year and often again later on. Emissions data is also subject to revision in light of improvements in data collection and the methodology used, with major revisions in 2021.
The table above applies Carbon Brief’s emissions calculations to the comparable energy use and emissions figures, which may differ from those published previously.
Another source of uncertainty is the fact that Carbon Brief’s approach to estimating the annual change in emissions differs from the methodology used for the government’s own provisional estimates. The government has access to more granular data not available for public use.
Carbon Brief’s analysis takes figures on the amount of energy sourced from coal, oil and gas reported in Energy Trends 1.2. These figures are combined with conversion factors for the CO2 emissions per unit of energy, published annually by the UK government. Conversion factors are available for each fuel type, for example, petrol, diesel, gas, coal for electricity generation.
For oil, the analysis also draws on Energy Trends 3.13, which further breaks down demand according to the subtype of oil, for example, petrol, jet fuel and so on. Similarly, for coal, the analysis draws on Energy Trends 2.6, which breaks down solid fuel use by subtype.
Emissions from each fuel are then estimated from the energy use multiplied by the conversion factor, weighted by the relative proportions for each fuel subtype.
For example, the UK uses roughly 50m tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) in the form of oil products, around half of which is from road diesel. So half the total energy use from oil is combined with the conversion factor for road diesel, another one-fifth for petrol and so on.
Energy use from each fossil fuel subtype is mapped onto the appropriate emissions conversion factor. In some cases, there is no direct read-across, in which case the nearest appropriate substitute is used. For example, energy use listed as “bitumen” is mapped to “processed fuel oils – residual oil”. Similarly, solid fuel used by “other conversion industries” is mapped to “petroleum coke”, and “other” solid fuel use is mapped to “coal (domestic)”.
The energy use figures are calculated on an inland consumption basis, meaning they include bunkers consumed in the UK for international transport by air and sea. In contrast, national emissions inventories exclude international aviation and shipping.
The analysis, therefore, estimates and removes the part of oil use that is due to the UK’s share of international aviation. It draws on the UK’s final greenhouse gas emissions inventory, which breaks emissions down by sector and reports the total for domestic aviation.
This domestic emissions figure is compared with the estimated emissions due to jet fuel use overall, based on the appropriate conversion factor. The analysis assumes that domestic aviation’s share of emissions is equivalent to its share of jet fuel energy use.
In addition to estimating CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use, Carbon Brief assumes that CO2 emissions from non-fuel sources, such as land-use change and forestry, are the same as a year earlier. Remaining greenhouse gas emissions are assumed to change in line with the latest government energy and emissions projections.
These assumptions are based on the UK government’s own methodology for preliminary greenhouse gas emissions estimates, published in 2019.
Note that the figures in this article are for emissions within the UK measured according to international guidelines. This means they exclude emissions associated with imported goods, including imported biomass, as well as the UK’s share of international aviation and shipping.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published detailed comparisons between various different approaches to calculating UK emissions, on a territorial, consumption, environmental accounts or international accounting basis.
The UK’s consumption-based CO2 emissions increased between 1990 and 2007. Since then, however, they have fallen by a similar number of tonnes as emissions within the UK.
Bioenergy is a significant source of renewable energy in the UK and its climate benefits are disputed. Contrary to public perception, however, only around one quarter of bioenergy is imported.
International aviation is considered part of the UK’s carbon budgets and faces the prospect of tighter limits on its CO2 emissions. The international shipping sector has a target to at least halve its emissions by 2050, relative to 2008 levels.
The post Analysis: UK emissions in 2023 fell to lowest level since 1879 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: UK emissions in 2023 fell to lowest level since 1879
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) – a major new rainforest protection fund launched by Brazil at COP30 – is unlikely to make payments to rainforest countries until at least 2028, experts said, while it raises funds in financial markets.
The proposed new mechanism aims to pay rainforest countries for achieving low deforestation rates. Rather than depending on grants, the TFFF would seek to raise public and private capital to make investments in financial markets, and then use part of the returns to reward countries which protect their rainforests.
But raising the US$125 billion of public and private investment needed to make meaningful payments could take years, according to Andrew Deutz, managing director of Global Policy and Partnerships at WWF, one of the organisations involved in the fund’s design.
He said it will likely take two or three years for the fund to raise private capital by issuing bonds, invest the money and generate enough returns to make significant payments. “So I don’t think we’re going to see payments to rainforest countries until 2028 or 2029,” Deutz said.
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Norway’s climate minister Andreas Bjelland Eriksen, another of the fund’s early backers, told Climate Home News that “the TFFF requires scale, which will take some time”, but added that it “is a historic opportunity” to finance the protection of tropical forests “for generations”.
The delay is not necessarily bad, according to Deutz, as it will allow communities to build capabilities and legal structures to handle the new flow of funds. “There needs to be a capacity-building process over the next couple of years with Indigenous organisations and local communities to be able to manage the flow of funds at that level,” he added.
At the COP26 climate summit in 2021, over 140 countries – covering 85% of the world’s forests – pledged to end deforestation by 2030. At last year’s COP30, the Brazilian government promised to create a roadmap towards ending deforestation by that same date.
But governments are far off track, with a yearly review showing that deforestation rates are currently 63% higher than what they should be to reach this goal. An estimated $570 billion funding gap for nature protection has contributed to the deficient results.
First step: raising $10 billion
While the TFFF has a long-term goal of raising $125bn in public and private capital, its proponents say the key goal for the fund in 2026 will be to raise the total amount of public investment to $10bn so that it can start to scale up.
The fund has already raised $6.7bn, but Norway’s $3bn pledge requires that the TFFF raises about $10bn mostly from other funders by the end of 2026 or they will not invest.
Before scaling up to the long-term $125bn goal – of which $25bn is public and $100bn private – the TFFF will have to prove that it can be successful in paying back investors and channeling funds for rainforest protection. The whole process can take years, Deutz said.
If this $10bn target is reached, the fund could begin raising private finance – up to an estimated $40bn, Deutz said. This initial $50bn tranche would serve to start making investments and show that the model works and can generate returns.
Bjelland Eriksen also said that reaching the $10bn target will be “an important priority” this year. “Only a handful of countries had the opportunities to assess it in detail before the [COP30] Belém summit – now is the time for more countries to do so,” the Norwegian minister said.
Public finance from governments is key for the TFFF model because it would act as a guarantee to lower risk for private investors, something very common in the financial sector, said Charlotte Hamill, partner at hedge fund Bracebridge Capital and one of the fund’s financial advisors, at an event earlier in January in Davos.
“Being able to do this at scale is actually really important, not only to be able to make the payments that are necessary for rainforest preservation but also, in a funny way, it allows you to buy slightly less risky assets because you’re gonna have a much larger pool to buy them off of,” she added.
New contributions?
João Paulo de Resende, TFFF Leader at Brazil’s Ministry of Finance, told Climate Home News that the country will continue fundraising efforts throughout this year, and said he has recently concluded a tour in East Asia speaking with government officials from Japan, South Korea and China.
Conversations with the Chinese government have become “a lot more serious”, said Felix Finkbeiner, founder of the non-profit Plant-for-the-Planet, which operates the online tracking platform TFFF Watch. He added that a Chinese investment would likely be similar in size to the French or German contributions, which would grant the country a seat on the TFFF board. France has pledged a €500m ($578m) investment while Germany has promised €1bn ($1.17bn).
While China is categorised as a developing country at UN climate talks, and thus has no legal responsibility to grant climate finance, the TFFF has been seen as an opportunity for the Asian country to contribute because it’s not an official mechanism within the UN. Deutz said that, for the Chinese government to contribute, they will need reassurance that the funds will not be counted as formal climate finance.
The UK is another of the countries expected to announce a contribution in the coming months, both Finkbeiner and Deutz said. The country announced cuts to climate finance this week as it ramps up defense spending, but Deutz noted that it could still contribute with funds to the TFFF.
“I’m still somewhat optimistic that [the $10bn goal] can happen despite the geopolitical turmoil because the TFFF does not require grant money. We’re not competing with humanitarian assistance,” Deutz explained. “Because governments are being asked to make a loan that would be paid back with interest, this comes out of a different pile of money”.
Multilateral banks such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) also reportedly considered contributions.
Brazil sharing leadership
Despite having led the official launch of the fund and spearheading its fundraising efforts, Brazil is now aiming to “share leadership” as other countries join the TFFF’s steering committee and establish a new board.
De Resende told Climate Home News that “the project no longer belongs solely to Brazil”, and added that the group of countries that have pledged contributions to the TFFF are also now playing a larger role in “finding ways to jointly promote sponsor outreach”.
Deutz said that Brazil wants to move towards a “shared leadership model”. “They are now asking the European countries to have one of them set up to be the co-chairs so that this is not seen as a Brazilian initiative but is rather seen as owned by all of them,” he added.
The fund will now have to form a steering committee, likely chaired by Brazil and one European country, which will instruct the World Bank on setting up the formal structures of the fund.
Bjelland Eriksen said there is “important work” ongoing to formally establish the fund’s investment arm (known as the TFIF), while de Resende said he expects to “have the fund incorporated in some European jurisdiction by the beginning of the second semester.”
The post COP30 rainforest fund unlikely to make first payments until 2028 appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP30 rainforest fund unlikely to make first payments until 2028
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Lena Luig is the head of the International Agricultural Policy Division at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a member of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Anna Lappé is the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.
As toxic clouds loom over Tehran and Beirut from the US and Israel’s bombardment of oil depots and civilian infrastructure in the region’s ongoing war, the world is once again witnessing the not-so-subtle connections between conflict, hunger, food insecurity and the vulnerability of global food systems dependent on fossil fuels, dominated by a few powerful countries and corporations.
The conflict in Iran is having a huge impact on the world’s fertilizer supply. The Strait of Hormuz is a critical trade route in the region for nearly half of the global supply of urea, the main synthetic fertilizer derived from natural gas through the conversion of ammonia.
With the Strait impacted by Iran’s blockades, prices of urea have shot up by 35% since the war started, just as planting season starts in many parts of the world, putting millions of farmers and consumers at risk of increasing production costs and food price spikes, resulting in food insecurity, particularly for low-income households. The World Food Programme has projected that an extra 45 million people would be pushed into acute hunger because of rises in food, oil and shipping costs, if the war continues until June.
Pesticides and synthetic fertilizer leave system fragile
On the face of it, this looks like a supply chain issue, but at the core of this crisis lies a truth about many of our food systems around the world: the instability and injustice in the very design of systems so reliant on these fossil fuel inputs for our food.
At the Global Alliance, a strategic alliance of philanthropic foundations working to transform food systems, we have been documenting the fossil fuel-food nexus, raising alarm about the fragility of a system propped up by fossil fuels, with 15% of annual fossil fuel use going into food systems, in part because of high-cost, fossil fuel-based inputs like pesticides and synthetic fertilizer. The Heinrich Böll Foundation has also been flagging this threat consistently, most recently in the Pesticide Atlas and Soil Atlas compendia.
We’ve seen this before: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sparked global disruptions in fertilizer supply and food price volatility. As the conflict worsened, fertilizer prices spiked – as much from input companies capitalizing on the crisis for speculation as from real cost increases from production and transport – triggering a food price crisis around the world.
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Since then, fertilizer industry profit margins have continued to soar. In 2022, the largest nine fertilizer producers increased their profit margins by more than 35% compared to the year before—when fertilizer prices were already high. As Lena Bassermann and Dr. Gideon Tups underscore in the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Soil Atlas, the global dependencies of nitrogen fertilizer impacted economies around the world, especially state budgets in already indebted and import-dependent economies, as well as farmers across Africa.
Learning lessons from the war in Ukraine, many countries invested heavily in renewable energy and/or increased domestic oil production as a way to decrease dependency on foreign fossil fuels. But few took the same approach to reimagining domestic food systems and their food sovereignty.
Agroecology as an alternative
There is another way. Governments can adopt policy frameworks to encourage reductions in synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use, especially in regions that currently massively overuse nitrogen fertilizer. At the African Union fertilizer and Soil Health Summit in 2024, African leaders at least agreed that organic fertilizers should be subsidized as well, not only mineral fertilizers, but we can go farther in actively promoting agricultural pathways that reduce fossil fuel dependency.
In 2024, the Global Alliance organized dozens of philanthropies to call for a tenfold increase in investments to help farmers transition from fossil fuel dependency towards agroecological approaches that prioritize livelihoods, health, climate, and biodiversity.
In our research, we detail the huge opportunity to repurpose harmful subsidies currently supporting inputs like synthetic fertilizer and pesticides towards locally-sourced bio-inputs and biofertilizer production. We know this works: There are powerful stories of hope and change from those who have made this transition, despite only receiving a fraction of the financing that industrial agriculture receives, with evidence of benefits from stable incomes and livelihoods to better health and climate outcomes.
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Inspiring examples abound: G-BIACK in Kenya is training farmers how to produce their own high-quality compost; start-ups like the Evola Company in Cambodia are producing both nutrient-rich organic fertilizer and protein-rich animal feed with black soldier fly farming; Sabon Sake in Ghana is enriching sugarcane bagasse – usually organic waste – with microbial agents and earthworms to turn it into a rich vermicompost.
These efforts, grounded in ecosystems and tapping nature for soil fertility and to manage pest pressures, are just some of the countless examples around the world, tapping the skill and knowledge of millions of farmers. On a national and global policy level, the Agroecology Coalition, with 480+ members, including governments, civil society organizations, academic institutions, and philanthropic foundations, is supporting a transition toward agroecology, working with natural systems to produce abundant food, boost biodiversity, and foster community well-being.
Fertilizer industry spins “clean” products
We must also inoculate ourselves from the fertilizer industry’s public relations spin, which includes promoting the promise that their products can be produced without heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Despite experts debunking the viability of what the industry has dubbed “green hydrogen” or “green or clean ammonia”, the sector still promotes this narrative, arguing that these are produced with resource-intensive renewable energy or Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), a costly and unreliable technology for reducing emissions.
As we mourn this conflict’s senseless destruction and death, including hundreds of children, we also recognize that peace cannot mean a return to business-as-usual. We need to upend the systems that allow the richest and most powerful to have dominion over so much.
This includes fighting for a food system that is based on genuine sovereignty and justice, free from dependency on fossil fuels, one that honors natural systems and puts power into the hands of communities and food producers themselves.
The post Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems appeared first on Climate Home News.
Middle East war is another wake-up call for fossil fuel-reliant food systems
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