The United Kingdom pumped 1.5 percent less carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere in 2018 than it did during the preceding year, continuing a six-year trend of falling emissions, according to a new report.

Carbon Brief, the?UK-based climate research website that produced the study, said the nation’s reduced reliance on coal-powered electricity was the main reason for the sustained period of shrinking emissions that started in 2013.

“This is the longest stretch of consecutive years with falling emissions,”Simon Evans, the report’s lead author, told the Financial Times.

The analysis of raw government data shows emissions of carbon dioxide in 2018 were effectively at their lowest level since 1888. The only years in which less carbon dioxide was produced – 1893 and 1926 – were impacted by huge strikes that meant much of the industrial sector was powered off.

The Weather Channel said the latest figures mean each person in the UK now produces an average of 5.4 metric tons of carbon pollution a year, the lowest per-person level since 1858.

But Evans noted that the latest fall in carbon dioxide?emissions, which are produced when fossil fuels are burned and which contribute to global warming,?was the smallest during the last six?years. And he said progress could be further stalled when Britain finishes phasing out its coal-fired power stations, something that is slated to happen?between now and 2025?with the decommissioning of the UK’s last seven coal-fired power stations.

“The UK’s emissions reductions are being flattered by reductions in the use of coal, but other sectors aren’t going in the same direction,” Evans warned, pointing out that the burning of oil and gas has?continued largely unchecked.

The UK now only gets around 5 percent of its electricity from coal-fired power stations, leaving little room to make further improvements. In 2012, coal generated around 40 percent of the nation’s power. In its place, Britain now gets 33 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, which includes wind and solar power.

The latest figures from Carbon Brief mean the UK has edged closer to its target of cutting its 1990 level of carbon dioxide production by 80 percent before 2050.?Carbon Brief said the 361?million?metric tons of carbon pollution created in the UK in 2018?was 39 percent of the 1990 total.

But critics say, with global warming already happening, the government needs to do more, and do it quickly.

The Committee on Climate Change, which advises the government on global warming issues, called for more clean energy to be used for transportation and heating.

And Britain’s opposition Labour Party said the decarbonization of the UK must be sped up.

Rebecca Long-Bailey, Britain’s shadow business secretary, told the Guardian: “The government are wrong to be complacent about the UK’s falling emissions when we know that winning slowly on climate change is the same as losing.”