美国国家公共电台 NPR The U.K. Economy Is Growing — But Its Energy Use Is Shrinking

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

We're now going to shift over to the United Kingdom, where energy use has been dropping over the past 15 years. But it's been a quiet victory and a mysterious one, as NPR's Camila Domonoske reports.

CAMILA DOMONOSKE, BYLINE¹: British electricity use dropped so much over the last decade that it's as if the U.K. shut down its largest coal power plant twice. That's according to the climate policy think tank Sandbag. And it's not just electricity. The country's total energy consumption of all kinds has dropped 10 percent since 2002.

GUY NEWEY: And that's kind of unusual, actually.

DOMONOSKE: Guy Newey used to be a climate adviser² in the British government. Now he works at Energy Systems Catapult, which promotes energy innovation. I asked him why this is happening. Are there just fewer people?

NEWEY: Nope, it's the opposite. The U.K. has had an increasing population.

DOMONOSKE: A slowing economy uses less power. Is the British economy struggling?

NEWEY: Our overall GDP has increased.

DOMONOSKE: It's not tied to skyrocketing costs, and it's not the weather. The decline remains³ if you factor in temperature. And the U.K. is seeing a drop, while Ireland, right next door, is not. In fact, last year, the U.K. was the only country in the EU to see a drop in electricity use. I asked Newey, is it something special about British people? - stoicism, self-restraint.

NEWEY: I mean, you know, we're quite reserved. But that's always been the case. I don't think that's increased or decreased over the last 10 years (laughter).

DOMONOSKE: So what is going on?

NEWEY: The first thing I'd say is it's not perfectly⁴ understood exactly what is happening.

DOMONOSKE: Analysts⁵ do know some of the factors, but even those can be a little confusing. Consider energy efficiency.

JONATHAN MARSHALL: We're getting better insulated homes and better insulated office buildings, more efficient televisions, computers, fridges, freezers, that sort of thing.

DOMONOSKE: Jonathan Marshall is the head of analysis at a think tank called Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. He says efficiency is definitely part of the drop in energy use. But energy standards for appliances are the same across Europe.

MARSHALL: You have energy ratings for fridges that are the same in the U.K., in Poland, in Italy.

DOMONOSKE: And only the U.K. is seeing use drop like this. Then when it comes to homes, it's not like the British government is making a huge insulation⁶ push.

MARSHALL: There isn't really a particularly strong energy efficiency policy in the U.K. at the moment.

DOMONOSKE: It's not a total mystery. Other factors include a shift away from heavy industry, improvements in streetlamps, tightened⁷ standards for boilers⁸ and changing consumer patterns. But added together, they don't quite seem to explain the drop. These solutions are not thrilling.

MARSHALL: It's a lot easier to get, you know, excited about electric vehicles and wind turbines than it is about insulation.

DOMONOSKE: And, Guy Newey says, it doesn't help that there's no one reason for the drop.

NEWEY: Yeah. It's much easier if you can just point to one thing and say, oh, brilliant. If we just did X, it delivers Y benefit, and that's fantastic.

DOMONOSKE: Still, this little puzzle is good news for the policy fight against greenhouse gas emissions⁹. Some people worry that restricting energy use could hurt a country's economy.

NEWEY: What we've seen, I guess, through history, is as people become richer, they tend to buy more stuff, use more stuff and consume more energy.

DOMONOSKE: But remember; the British GDP has been rising. That link between growth and energy use has been broken in the U.K.

NEWEY: The interesting question for kind of wider global energy policy is, can that example be replicated¹⁰?

DOMONOSKE: So countries around the world could grow economically and slash¹¹ emissions if they figure out what Britain is doing right. Camila Domonoske, NPR News.

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