British Conservative MP John Redwood said the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in November would not produce the desired results, unless other nations including China and the US did more to cut their carbon emissions. And he had this to say about Germany on Radio Today programme: "It's only going to work if Germany, which puts out twice as much as we do, starts to take the issue seriously and closes down its coal power stations." The Global Carbon Atlas (GCA) publishes emissions data from around the world.
It says in 2018, the UK emitted 380 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCOâ‚‚) from the burning of fossil fuels. In the same year, Germany emitted 755 MtCOâ‚‚, about twice as much as the UK, and about 2% of the global total of 36,441 MtCOâ‚‚. So the figures for 2018 support Mr Redwood's claim, but some context is needed when making this direct comparison. For a start, Germany is bigger than the UK. It's home to 83 million people, 17 million more than the UK. It makes more things than the UK.
Germany is a net exporter - meaning it exports more goods than it imports from other countries - whereas the UK is a net importer - meaning it imports more goods than it exports. Manufacturing accounts for twice as much of the economy in Germany as it does in the UK, according to the World Bank (23% of German national GDP, compared with just 11% in the UK). "Germany has a larger population than the UK, so it's not too surprising total energy consumption and emissions are higher, because they have more residential and commercial buildings, and more cars on the road," says Dr Mike O'Sullivan, a mathematician and climate researcher at the University of Exeter, who collects data for the GCA. There's also the question of which emissions you are measuring.
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