Carbon emissions rise threatens 1.5C climate target
Global carbon emissions are expected to rise by 1% this year, imperilling the 1.5C target countries are trying to save at the Cop27 conference in Egypt.
The Global Carbon Project, the gold standard in tracking annual emissions, projected that they would rise to 36.6 billion tonnes of CO2 from burning fossil fuels.
The increase means that global emissions are higher than pre-pandemic levels.
‘‘It’s certainly going in the wrong direction,’’ said Glen Peters, research director at the Centre for International Climate Research in Oslo (Cicero), who helped compile the figures.
While the rate of growth is in line with the average annual increase in emissions since the financial crisis, the rise this year was triggered by the energy crisis.
China’s hunger for coal usually dictates the worldwide trend because it is responsible for 31% of global emissions.
But an economic slowdown means China’s emissions are expected to fall 0.9% this year.
While the EU’s overall emissions are expected to drop 0.8%, the fall would have been greater without the impact of gas power stations after countries including Germany fired up coal plants. Coal emissions from the EU are up almost 7%. Emissions increased this year in the economically buoyant US and India, which recorded strong growth in use of coal and oil.
‘‘Generally, in past years global emissions have gone up because China is the biggest contributor,’’ Peters said. ‘‘Surprisingly this year it’s not the biggest contributor, in fact it’s negative.
‘‘But it’s offset by the shift away from gas to coal at the global level. It’s an unusual year because of the fallout from Ukraine.’’
The return to air travel has also increased carbon levels though emissions from aviation and oil overall remain below prepandemic levels.
The 1% increase is a reminder of the stark challenge facing tens of thousands of delegates at Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Scientists say meeting the 1.5C goal, considered the level beyond which extreme weather will increase significantly in intensity and frequency, will require 2030 emissions to fall by 45% on 2010 levels.
Global emissions have grown at about 2% a year on average since 1960, before soaring to 3% in the 2000s as China boomed.
Since the financial crash, however, emissions have slowed to about 1% a year. Covid restrictions in 2020 led to a fall in emissions of about 5%, the sharpest drop since World War II.
They bounced back by more than 5 per cent last year as economic stimulus took hold.
Peters said emissions should be falling by about 5% a year.
‘‘The only year in recent times that’s happened is 2020, only to be immediately wiped out the next year,’’ he said.
The expectation is that emissions will continue to rise next year. Emissions from oil remain below 2019 levels and aviation is recovering. Peters said: ‘‘With fossil fuel emissions it’s hard to see how they’ll go down in the next two or three years without something dramatic happening.’’