This presentation was recorded at session three of “Preston People’s Climate Jury” . The theme of the session was ” What are Green House Gas emissions and where do they come from?”
The People’s Climate Jury will provide 30 Preston residents with a chance to have their say on how we tackle climate change across the city and make recommendations to local leaders about how the city should act in response.
For more information on Preston People’s Climate Jury, please visit
https://www.preston.gov.uk/article/7872/People-s-Climate-Jury
Mike Berners Lee, thinks, writes and researches on sustainability and responses to 21st century problems. He is the author of acclaimed books, including There is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years, and How Bad Are Bananas? The carbon footprint of everything. He is a professor at Lancaster University, where his research includes supply chain carbon modelling, sustainable food systems and the environmental impact of ICT
The Preston People’s Climate Jury was funded by the United Kingdom Shared Prosperity Fund.
The UK Shared Prosperity Fund is a central pillar of the UK government’s Levelling Up agenda and provides £2.6 billion of funding for local investment by March 2025. The Fund aims to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK investing in communities and place, supporting local business, and people and skills. For more information, visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-shared-prosperity-fund-prospectus
Thanks and thanks everyone for being part of this uh part of this process which I think is a really a really good process so I’m just going to talk quickly not more than 15 minutes about so what is a carbon footprint um you know where do our carbon impacts come
From um and just in very general terms about some of the ways in which you know where that where those carbon FRS come from and some of the ways in which we can bring them downwards so you hear this term carbon footprint a lot I just
Want to describe what I’m it’s kind of a short hand for the total climate change impact of anything an activity or an object so you know if if you look at if you say well what’s the what’s the carbon footprint of my of my phone that would be what is the climate change
Impact of all the processes that had to go on in the manufacturer of this phone including digging the uh digging the minerals out of the ground turning them into Metals turning them into complex Parts putting them all together putting them in a nice shiny box and getting
Them to me and then there’s also the carbon footprint of using the phone which comes out of what’s the carbon footprint of the uh generating the electricity that is needed um you know in its use if you look at uh if you ask what’s the carbon footprint of driving
For example it would be some of that would be the carbon footprint of the um the emissions that come out of the exhaust pipe of the car if it’s not an electric one but that’s not the whole story you’ve also got some other that go on so um there are more emissions
Involved in uh dragging the getting the oil out of the ground um taking that oil to a Refinery refining it turning it into petrol or diesel and then driving that diesel to a petrol station so there’s a whole load of bits of emissions like that that that clock up
Along the way uh and then you drive the car and the car the full carbon footprint of driving also includes the fact that every 200,000 Mi or so uh you probably have to get a new a new car needs to be manufactured and that’s got a whole big carbon footprint because you
Got to get all the minerals out of the ground turn it into a into a new car and so on and there’s other bits and pieces as well so during the lifetime of a car you need to do maintenance and that’s that’s that also involves some emissions
Some directly at the garage that you know the garage using electricity to drive the drills and parts and everything that do the maintenance but also the carbon footprint of all the parts that they that have to be manufactured and bought in and so on so
If you look at if you look at the carbon footprint of just about anything it’s all it’s practically impossible to be accurate about it um because it’s so complex if you look at say you know what’s the carbon footprint of this this phone that I’m using and in
My work I I look at this kind of thing a lot if you look at all the processes that had to go on to to to create that phone actually they they they they go on forever into in ever smaller little bits if you you you can follow all these Pathways um
And so you have to find ways of making best estimates that are the good news is you can usually make good enough estimates that are good enough for us to be able to um have a get a sense of the kinds of things that matter the most in
Terms of bringing our carbon down um and the kinds of things that we can chill out about a bit more but if anyone ever talks to you about being really accurate um they it’s not really quite right the nature of the the nature of the Beast is
That it’s just um it’s always harder to measure than that when when you’re looking at a carbon footprint when by which we mean you know the when we’re talking about the total carbon impact of an of an imp of an object you know a thing or or an
Activity and the other thing to say is that we say carbon but actually it’s really a shorthand what we mean is a greenhouse gas footprint because you probably heard that you know there are more than one is carbon dioxide is the biggest contributor to climate change but there are other greenhouse gases as
Well the second most important one is methane and there are there other there are other gases as well that contribute and there are some other processes that also also contribute as well um and we sort of add them all up together into a kind of carbon dioxide equivalent um and
That’s the the the unit that we that we use okay so next slide great so just I said it was rough number here’s an estimate of what the average the average um UK person’s carbon footprint looks like so this is if you look at everything that they do
And buy in the whole of their um in the whole of their Lifestyles and it divides up pretty nicely as a best estimate into roughly four almost equal quarters so about a quarter of it is food about a quarter of it is everything to do with their home and their accommodation and
That includes kind of uh energy that they use in their home it includes the fact they might have to maintain their home every now and again it includes the fact that every now and again people buy a new home brand new home um and it also includes the carbon footprint of if you
Ever go off and stay in a hotel or you know away from home or something like that and then slightly bigger than quarter is about travel and then slightly smaller than a quarter is I’m just calling it everything else and that’s everything that’s all the non-edible things that you buy so things
Like my phone and this book and the clothes I’m wearing and the Furnishings in your home um you know everything physical that you buy that you don’t eat um but it also is kind of a catch all for a whole load of services that you might buy um but also your contribution
To all the government all the kind of National Services that go on like um the fact that you contribute to a Health Service and you contribute to there’s an education system that you you you’re part of and there’s also um a defense uh the UK has an army and a police force
And all that kind of and it has a government system and all the rest of it and and there’s kind of a proportionate allocation of your contribution to to all of that so there we go that’s it in four rough courses and of course everybody’s that so that would be your
Calm footprint it’s somewhere around the 10 tons Mark if you’re an absolutely average person but of course the shape of every individual’s footprint is really different and two things quickly to say about this and we’ll hear a bit more about it in a minute is that um by
And large it’s not always the case but by and large wealthier people have bigger carbon Footprints because they buy and do more stuff so they have a bigger climate change impact and less well-off people tend to have smaller climate change impacts but also it really depends on what the shape of your
Lifestyle is so you know some people don’t have cars and never fly and their travel footprint is likely to be a lot smaller we we’ll look at that in a sec so next slide actually all right so if you were to break it down into a bit more detail so
First up the food almost all of the food is about food and drink that we buy from shops but there’s a little bit down here which is eating out obviously some people eat out more than others home and accommodation so there’s a little bit here which is when you’re
Staying people staying away from home with a hotel or a B&B or whatever it is you’re staying in um 6% of the total thing here is the actual carbon footprint of housing so that’s maintaining and building new houses um then this chunk here is household fuel That’s not including
Electricity but that would be um oil gas coif fused gas so that’s 11% of the total and then this chunk here is household electricity the good news about this is that this is falling year on year or has been falling quite fast because the UK has been decarbonizing its G getting more and
More of its electricity from renewable sources less and less of it from fossil fuel moving on to the uh travel bit just see how my time’s going okay uh travel bit so it really varies depending on who you are so there’s a little bit up here for trains buses and other public
Transport this bit here this is the bit that it would be really good to make this one bigger because if you could make this one bigger you could in doing so almost certainly cut out these other here because it’s the most carbon friendly po be the most one one of the
Most carbon friendly ways of traveling per mile anyway um Fair Crossings and cruises just a little bit there this is personal this is personal flights here so it’s a massive 9% sometimes you hear people talking about flying being s of two two or 3% of the world’s carbon
Footprint but if you’re in the UK it’s higher than that because we’re a rich country and we’re an island and we tend to fly more and also for sort of complicated reasons flying is quite gets underestimated its impact so flying is 9% but of course some people those of
People most people in the UK actually never fly which means if you are but if you’re someone who flies a lot then it’ be absolutely could be absolutely dominating your your car footprint and then you’ve got 3% here which is cars that’s the manufacturer of cars and
Maintaining of cars not driving them and then this chunk here this 11% is vehicle for you um so that’s the travel bit then everything else this chunk here is the non-f food shopping as I said everything from iPhones to um to uh your clothing and Furnishing and so on um then Leisure
Recreation and activities other bought Services any service you buy has got um has a carbon footprint it’s just your household insurance I mean that’s done by people in offices who you know keep warm in their offices and sometimes get on airplanes and so that’s why that has
A Gard footprint Water waste and sewage and then there’s a 10% here which is kind of everything else health education and all the other public services and that’s your unfortunate contribution to that so there we are and so what would you do just in the last couple of
Minutes that I’ve got how would you how would you bring any of that downwards well the most important thing on food and drink um is that uh so this the carbon footprint food and drink comes mainly from the creation of food so you know on farms and the biggest single
Thing that everybody needs to S understand about that is that the biggest thing we could do to reduce that is to reduce the amount of meat and dairy in our diets doesn’t have to be to zero but it’s really clear cut and that’s also if you care about things
Like feeding the world and biodiversity second most important thing is to is to make sure we eat everything we buy and nothing gets wasted left on the plate goes off in the fridge and then there are some other s of details around what’s Su about what
Local food looks like but those are the two biggest things um home energy there’s a mixture of different ways of bringing that down there are ways you that some people can bring it down and save money so that’s you know of that’s simple things like habits of turning the lights off when
You’re not in the room and trying to seal up the the seal up drafts and so on like a simple home energy improving things not always you can only take them to a certain point but they are at least simple practical things don’t require a
Lot of planning and do save you money at the other end of the scale there are very expensive things that most people need a lot of help with like really retrofitting your home sorting out the Energy System sorting out the double or triple glazing sorting out um you know
Sophisticated insulation and and all that kind of thing and that’s the kind of you know most people iness will need will need support on that what’s retrofitting your home retrofit in your home means taking an uh a leaky home the UK’s got a very energy inefficient
Housing stock and turning it into a home that is in that is efficient with its energy doesn’t leak out the energy through the walls and the windows and the drafts and so on and maybe also has an energy system like solar panels on the roof and the heat pumps that are
Very efficient way of of heating other measures like that pretty complex and it’s pretty expensive but it’s great when it’s done travel um as I said you know people who fly a lot that’s one there okay travel is just fly that’s pretty obvious um you know there
Again there there are ways of doing this that save money LS of opportunity for co- benefits here ways of if we can get this happening ways of saving money keeping people healthier the more we can get cycling and walking and so on uh the better um uh you know and and it’s
Cheaper um and if we can get people out of petrol and diesel cars around the streets of Preston it’s also good for air quality which keeps the population healthier um as well and then my final 30 seconds I’ll just talk about the the non food stuff now can we have an
Economy in which people buy less stuff buy it sustainably buy things that are made to last make them last get and most importantly get them repaired when they break instead of just chucking in the mid of Bin and when you finish with them sell them second hand and um and can
Things be shared instead of everybody owning their own one so those are all ways of dematerializing and just by the way they also save money and some of them build community and so of potentially opportunities to make life better and fairer um there as well so
Around this kind of pie I hope there’s lots of there are lots of ways of cutting the carbon that can also be done in a way that make life better for people who are less well off and create a fairer society as well so just taste us about that than