It's difficult to compare, the UK had a lot of dirty coal power stations in 1990 whereas France was mostly nuclear. We had some low hanging fruit to pick and started doing so for cost reasons more than anything else.

Poland and most EU countries in Eastern Europe are using more coal than ever. You can make an incredible reduction by changing those coal plants to oil or natural gas.

The choice of 1990 is also rather convenient for carbon emissions in Eastern Europe. A lot changed in 1991.

To another fossil fuel? May I introduce you to our lord and savior nuclear energy?

... or by having Poland leave the EU.

True, but Germany has a lot of coal.

Germany is really a shame, they build a lot of coal plants because of the phase out of nuclear. Mean while a lot of NIMBY laws and protest is stopping onshore wind.

That is technically true but misleading because a) all of those plants were planned before the nuclear exit and b) they all close in 2038. Still a shame, though.

ok fine but in 2020 63% of Germany electricity production is carbon neutral (renewable + nuclear), and this is increasing every year. https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=en&...

But there will be no nuclear after 2022 which will hinder the progress, meanwhile this;

https://www.powermag.com/germany-brings-last-new-coal-plant-...

Ah, yes. But Germany isnt the 26 other countries in th eEU. Poland on the other hand has a ton of coal.

> a ton of coal

At least.

Not really a level playing field, is it? The EU are obviously trying to get a competitive advantage over the U.K. with such a low target

If only the UK had had some way of influencing the EU's policies.

The UK position on this is very odd: we've been quite effective, but nobody wants to take credit for it in public.

This is quite ironic, the EU sets its own standards lower than the UK, but in trade negotiations accuses the UK of potentially lowering the standards to get an advantage. Same stories with subsidies. I guess it's true, cheaters are always the most afraid of being cheated.

Given that UK is not able to keep its word for more than a year (internal market clause), it is sensible for EU to not trust whatever promise the current PM is making.

Bojo has already stated that they aim to lower their standards to better compete with the EU, so totally understandable that the EU doesn't just believe him.

It's almost as if the word "standards" covers a whole host of things in a very, very wide array of policy areas.

The UK seems peculiarly obsessed with wind power. And a few times last month, it was (unusually?) wind-less and the wind power contribution to the national grid dropped to almost zero, whilst at the same time...fossil fuel and nuclear had to pick up the slack.