Carbon measurement in the NHS: Calculating the first consumption-based total carbon footprint of an NHS Trust.

Paul Brockway of ARUP completed his MSc in ‘Climate Change and Sustainable Development’ at the Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development (IESD) in 2009, resulting in this dissertation. He is currently working with Leticia Ozawa-Meida at IESD ([email protected] or 0116 257 7962) on calculating the university’s carbon footprint. Paul is a Senior Sustainability Consultant at ARUP and can be contacted on 0191 261 6080 or [email protected] .In January 2009 a national NHS England carbon reduction strategy (SDU, 2009a) was launched. It is believed to be the first public sector organisation worldwide to publish a carbon strategy based on the embedded emissions of all its activities: a consumption-based approach. The strategy sets a target for 2015 to reduce NHS England’s total consumption-based emissions from travel, building energy and procurement sectors to 10% below the 2007 level of 20.0MtCO2 (SEI and Arup, 2009a). At the local level, NHS Trusts currently measure building energy emissions and in some cases staff travel emissions, but do not include procurement. This omission is important, as procurement is estimated to account for 60% of NHS England emissions. Therefore, as none of the NHS Trusts in England have undertaken a consumption-based footprint, they have no means of baselining all emissions and checking individual progress towards the national target. A gap therefore exists between NHS England targets and the measurement tools available at an NHS Trust level. This research seeks to explore this gap. Firstly, the consumption-based carbon footprint of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was calculated, and determined to be 168,902tCO2 in 2007. A similar methodology was used to that developed for the NHS England carbon footprint study (SDC, 2008), except importantly bottom-up data was obtained directly from the NHS Trust. By reviewing the results, and comparing them to those for NHS England, the footprinting technique appears technically viable for use at an NHS Trust level. Secondly, the applications and benefits of this technique were examined. At a Trust level, there are clear benefits in establishing and monitoring baseline emissions, and comparing progress to NHS England targets. In addition, wider use could accrue benefits via inter-Trust and regional NHS benchmarking. Lastly, this technique could in future be applied to the development of ‘low carbon pathway’ models of care, by mapping carbon emissions to patient costing systems

National-level energy use, rebound and economic growth: Insights from useful work and exergy analysis

The global climate challenge is keeping below a 2⁰C global temperature rise (versus pre-industrial levels) to avoid runaway climate change. Urgent policy-based action is required to reduce global fossil fuel use and CO2 emissions, without breaking the economy. This policy conflict highlights the fact that energy-CO2 and energy-economy interactions are at opposite ends of the energy conversion chain: at one end fossil fuels are extracted, at the other it is exchanged (via monetary transaction) for energy services. The study of the whole energy conversion chain seems desirable, to provide a broad evidence base for policies aimed at meeting both energy and economic priorities. Such study requires an exergy analysis approach, examining exergy as ‘usable energy’ from extraction (primary exergy) to ‘useful work’ (when it is lost in exchange for energy services). However, such national-level exergy analysis is currently an underused approach. In response, I use a useful work accounting and exergy analysis approach to study energy use, rebound and economic growth for the UK, US and China. Several key findings and insights emerge. First, gains in national-level energy (exergy) efficiencies for the UK and US have slowed or stalled, due to efficiency dilution: the increasing use of lower efficiency processes. Second, the asymptotic national exergy efficiency limit is around 15%, suggesting current energy efficiency policies may not work effectively at the economy-wide scale. Third, my primary energy forecast in 2030 for China - the world’s largest energy consumer (and CO2 emitter) - was 20% higher than mainstream projections. Fourth, using an exergy-based approach, the UK and US exhibit partial energy rebound, but China’s energy rebound was higher (close to, or above backfire). If rebound is significant, this weakens the effect of current energy efficiency policies, and has implications for our understanding the role of energy efficiency in economic growth

The rise and stall of world electricity efficiency:1900-2017, results and implication for the renewables transitions

In the coming renewables-based energy transition, global electricity consumption is expected to double by 2050, entailing widespread end-use electrification, with significant impacts on energy efficiency. We develop a long-run, worldwide societal exergy analysis focused on electricity to provide energetic insights for this transition. Our 1900-2017 electricity world database contains the energy carriers used in electricity production, final end-uses, and efficiencies. We find world primary-to-final exergy (i.e. conversion) efficiency increased rapidly from 1900 (6%) to 1980 (39%), slowing to 43% in 2017 as power station generation technology matured. Next, despite technological evolution, final-to-useful end-use efficiency was surprisingly constant (~48%), due to “efficiency dilution”, wherein individual end-use efficiency gains are offset by increasing uptake of less efficient end uses. Future electricity efficiency therefore depends on the shares of high efficiency (e.g. electrified transport and industrial heating) and low efficiency (e.g. cooling and low temperature heating) end uses. Our results reveal past efficiency increases (carbon intensity of electricity production reduced from 5.23 kgCO2/kWh in 1900 to 0.49 kgCO2/kWh in 2017) did little to decrease global electricity-based CO2 emissions, which rose 380-fold. The historical slow-pace of transition in generation mix and electric end-uses suggest strong, urgent incentives are needed to meet climate goals

Downscaling down under: towards degrowth in integrated assessment models

IPCC reports, to date, have not featured ambitious mitigation scenarios with degrowth in high-income regions. Here, using MESSAGEix-Australia, we create 51 emissions scenarios for Australia with near-term GDP growth going from +3%/year to rapid reductions (−5%/year) to explore how a traditional integrated assessment model (IAM) represents degrowth from an economic starting point, not just energy demand reduction. We find that stagnating GDP per capita reduces the mid-century need for upscaling solar and wind energy by about 40% compared to the SSP2 growth baseline, and limits future material needs for renewables. Still, solar and wind energy in 2030 is more than quadruple that of 2020. Faster reductions in energy demand may entail higher socio-cultural feasibility concerns, depending on the policies involved. Strong reductions in inequality reduce the risk of lowered access to decent living services. We discuss research needs and possible IAM extensions to improve post-growth and degrowth scenario modelling

Thermodynamic Efficiency Gains and their Role as a Key ‘Engine of Economic Growth’

Increasing energy efficiency is commonly viewed as providing a key stimulus to economic growth, through investment in efficient technologies, reducing energy use and costs, enabling productivity gains, and generating jobs. However, this view is received wisdom, as empirical validation has remained elusive. A central problem is that current energy-economy models are not thermodynamically consistent, since they do not include the transformation of energy in physical terms from primary to end-use stages. In response, we develop the UK MAcroeconometric Resource COnsumption (MARCO-UK) model, the first econometric economy-wide model to explicitly include thermodynamic efficiency and end energy use (energy services). We find gains in thermodynamic efficiency are a key ‘engine of economic growth’, contributing 25% of the increases to gross domestic product (GDP) in the UK over the period of 1971–2013. This confirms an underrecognised role for energy in enabling economic growth. We attribute most of the thermodynamic efficiency gains to endogenised technical change. We also provide new insights into how the ‘efficiency-led growth engine’ mechanism works in the whole economy. Our results imply a slowdown in thermodynamic efficiency gains will constrain economic growth, whilst future energy-GDP decoupling will be harder to achieve than we suppose. This confirms the imperative for economic models to become thermodynamically consistent

Untangling the drivers of energy reduction in the UK productive sectors: Efficiency or offshoring?

The UK has been one of the few countries that has successfully decoupled final energy consumption from economic growth over the past 15 years. This study investigates the drivers of final energy consumption in the UK productive sectors between 1997 and 2013 using a decomposition analysis that incorporates two novel features. Firstly, it investigates to what extent changes in thermodynamic efficiency have contributed to overall changes in sectoral energy intensities. Secondly, it analyses how much of the structural change in the UK economy is driven by the offshoring of energy-intensive production overseas. The results show that energy intensity reductions are the strongest factor reducing energy consumption. However, only a third of the energy savings from energy intensity reductions can be attributed to reductions in thermodynamic efficiency with re- ductions in the exergy intensity of production making up the reminder. In addition the majority of energy savings from structural change are a result of offshoring, which constitutes the second biggest factor reducing energy consumption. In recent years the contributions of all decomposition factors have been declining with very little change in energy consumption after 2009. This suggests that a return to the strong reductions in energy consumption observed between 2001 and 2009 in the UK productive sectors should not be taken for granted. Given that further reductions in UK final energy consumption are needed to achieve global targets for climate change mitigation, additional policy interventions are needed. Such policies should adopt a holistic approach, taking into account all sectors in the UK economy as well as the relationship between the structural change in the UK and in the global supply chains delivering the goods and service for consumption and investment in the UK

Developing an input-output based method to estimate a national-level energy return on investment (EROI)

Concerns have been raised that declining energy return on energy investment (EROI) from fossil fuels, and low levels of EROI for alternative energy sources, could constrain the ability of national economies to continue to deliver economic growth and improvements in social wellbeing while undertaking a low-carbon transition. However, in order to test these concerns on a national scale, there is a conceptual and methodological gap in relation to calculating a national-level EROI and analysing its policy implications. We address this by developing a novel application of an Input-Output methodology to calculate a national-level indirect energy investment, one of the components needed for calculating a national-level EROI. This is a mixed physical and monetary approach using Multi-Regional Input-Output data and an energy extension. We discuss some conceptual and methodological issues relating to defining EROI for a national economy, and describe in detail the methodology and data requirements for the approach. We obtain initial results for the UK for the period 1997–2012, which show that the country’s EROI has been declining since the beginning of the 21st Century. We discuss the policy relevance of measuring national-level EROI and propose avenues for future research

Energy efficiency and economy-wide rebound effects: a review of the evidence and its implications

The majority of global energy scenarios anticipate a structural break in the relationship between energy consumption and gross domestic product (GDP), with several scenarios projecting absolute decoupling, where energy use falls while GDP continues to grow. However, there are few precedents for absolute decoupling, and current global trends are in the opposite direction. This paper explores one possible explanation for the historical close relationship between energy consumption and GDP, namely that the economy-wide rebound effects from improved energy efficiency are larger than is commonly assumed. We review the evidence on the size of economy-wide rebound effects and explore whether and how such effects are taken into account within the models used to produce global energy scenarios. We find the evidence base to be growing in size and quality, but remarkably diverse in terms of the methodologies employed, assumptions used, and rebound mechanisms included. Despite this diversity, the results are broadly consistent and suggest that economy-wide rebound effects may erode more than half of the expected energy savings from improved energy efficiency. We also find that many of the mechanisms driving rebound effects are overlooked by integrated assessment and global energy models. We therefore conclude that global energy scenarios may underestimate the future rate of growth of global energy demand