The British government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) performs a quarterly survey on the public’s attitudes towards Net Zero and Climate Change. The Winter 2022 report has just been released.
The report focuses on public awareness of Net Zero and concern about climate change. Participants in the survey were given a brief description of the UK government’s goals regarding each topic before being asked a question.
For Net Zero, the participants were informed of the government’s goal to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 using proactive and reactive strategies. They were then asked how they would rate their level of awareness around Net Zero, with 89% of respondents saying that they were aware of Net Zero.
Concern around climate change was 82%. Though overall concern was consistent with the results of the Autumn 2022 survey, the degrees to which participants were concerned shifted. In Autumn 2022 38% of participants were fairly concerned and 45% very concerned; by Winter 2022 44% of participants were fairly concerned and 38% were very concerned.
Industry and Net Zero
The BEIS’ survey shows that the British public are largely concerned about climate change and Net Zero. Though this concern is to varying degrees, the consensus that these are important issues indicates that there is a clear mandate for improving British sustainability.
Although the BEIS study was focused on individual perceptions and habits, we can acknowledge that industrial companies have a significant impact on climate change. Consequently, industrial actions also have an impact on the realism of the government’s Net Zero by 2050 goal.
The British manufacturing industry produces 15% of the UK’s carbon emissions (78 MtCO2e). In the BEIS’ Net Zero Strategy, they identify that in order to improve the UK’s carbon footprint, industry emissions need to decrease significantly and that any emissions that can’t be avoided should be treated using Greenhouse Gas Removal methods.
How Pigging Will Help Increase Sustainability
Manufacturers across the world, not just in the UK, have a responsibility to work towards decreasing their carbon footprint. There are many approaches to carbon reduction and carbon off-setting.
Product recovery (“pigging”) is a popular technology with companies that manufacture or process liquids for many reasons. Pigging is mainly used by companies to recover product and reduce waste. However, there are other benefits of product recovery systems.
In 2022, HPS had a report done by Carbon Zero, a consultancy company who used data from one of our clients to formulate a report on the impact of a pigging system.
Using two pigging systems used by a paint company to manufacture water-based and solvent-based paints they determined that HPS pigging technology reduces carbon emissions by up to 99.3% per pigging run. For the paint manufacturer this is equivalent to 2.68 tonnes of CO2.
Although the specific quantity of CO2e will differ for each system and product, HPS systems will have a significant impact on a company’s carbon footprint and sustainability rating.
Download your free copy of our Carbon-Zero Report.
Find Out More
To learn more about how HPS product recovery systems can help your processes become more environmentally sustainable, read our article on sustainable manufacturing or contact us.