Carbon emissions rise after 3 years of stability

World carbon emissions are set to rise 2% this year to a new record, scientists said on Monday, dashing hopes that global emissions had already peaked.

Carbon emissions had been roughly flat from 2014-16, but will increase this year mainly due to a rise in China after a two-year decline, the scientists said.

Their data, presented during negotiations among almost 200 nations in Germany about details of the 2015 Paris agreement, are a setback to a global goal of curbing emissions to avert more downpours, heat waves, and rising sea levels.

“The plateau of last year was not peak emissions after all,” the Global Carbon Project, a group of 76 scientists in 15 countries, wrote of the findings.

Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry, the bulk of man-made greenhouse gases, were on track to gain 2% in 2017 from 2016 levels to a record high of 37 billion tonnes, it said.

“Global CO2 emissions appear to be going up strongly once again ... This is very disappointing,” said lead researcher Corinne Le Quere, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at University of East Anglia in Britain.

Glen Peters, another leader of the study at the CICERO Centre for International Climate Research in Oslo, said China’s emissions were set to rise 3.5%, driven by more coal demand.

China, the top greenhouse gas emitter ahead of the US, accounts for almost 30% of world emissions.

US emissions were set to decline by 0.4% in 2017, a smaller fall than in recent years, also reflecting more burning of coal.

Coal’s gains were linked to a rise in the price of natural gas that made coal more attractive in power plants, Peters said, rather than the effects of US President Donald Trump’s pro-coal policies. REUTERS

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