UK greenhouse gas emissions down 2.5 percent as renewables hit record

Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions fell 2.5 percent in 2018, dropping for a sixth straight year but more slowly than before, as record output of renewable power ate away at coal-fired generation, government data showed on Thursday. Output of the heat-trapping gases in Europe’s second-largest emitter behind Germany fell to 449 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said in a preliminary report. Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions have now fallen 43.5 percent since 1990, putting it more than halfway towards meeting a legally binding target to cut them by 2050 to 80 percent below 1990 levels.