[alecmg]

Could it be quantified how much UK is using coal power of other countries?

Since industry is moved outside, the products we consume use power of producer country, mostly China. Is there a correlation in reduction of local coal power and amount of energy intensive products imported?

[jillesvangurp]

It's all connected of course.

It's much easier to just look at the global consumption of coal. Peak coal usage was in 2022 (a brief spike caused by the Russian invasion of the Ukraine). With the exception of China and India, coal usage has declined pretty much everywhere. And in many western countries, like the UK and US it is being phased out rapidly; mostly for economical reasons. It's just no longer cost competitive.

China is still building coal plants but their usage seems to have peaked as well or be close to that as they have aggressively accelerated deployment of wind and solar there and are of course responsible for producing most of the growth of that. Also, there's a sense of urgency there because coal related pollution was making their cities unlivable. This is similar to what happened in the UK mid last century. Also, they are pursuing some aggressive short term goals to reduce dependence on coal.

[TheBruceHimself]

On the flip side is really fair for a nation to claim their emissions aren't their responsibility because it was due to the production of exported goods? Would we accept that line from Germany if they decided to keep a coal plant open. "Oh, that's not our CO2, it's all going to make cars for China. It's their CO2". A little ubsurd when Germany gets rich off the sale. All the profit, none of the responsbility. If china wants to make our stuff I only think it's fair that they are responsible for the pollution caused by the production.

If anything else this narrative "exported CO2" muddies the water and makes it harder to hold nations to account. A basic "emissions in your borders are your responsibility to handle and reduce" is easy to understand, hard to game, and avoids this all devolving into CO2 accounting tricks.

[ZeroGravitas]

CO2 is about 20% higher when accounting for imports:

https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom#consum...

But both are still trending down.

[WeylandYutani]

That is a good point. Europe has since the 1970s actually cleaned up the continent pretty well by kicking out a lot of polluting industry.

(The latest target of environmentalists in the Netherlands was data centers. They used too much power, water whatever. So they went to the deserts of Spain. Epic win).