One year after world leaders made a splashy promise to shift away from fossil fuels, countries are burning more oil, natural gas and coal than ever before, researchers said this week.
Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are on track to reach a record 37.4 billion metric tons in 2024, a 0.8 percent increase over 2023 levels, according to new data from the Global Carbon Project. It’s a trend that puts countries farther from their goal of stopping global warming.
The increase was not uniform across the globe. Emissions will most likely decline this year in the United States and Europe, and fossil fuel use in China slowed. Yet that was offset by a surge in carbon dioxide from India and the rest of the world.
The findings were made public early on Wednesday at the United Nations climate change summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, where diplomats and world leaders have gathered to discuss how to raise trillions of dollars to cope with rising global temperatures. Those talks have already been jolted by the election of Donald J. Trump and the expectation that the United States will soon retreat from the fight against global warming.
Some experts had previously suggested that global emissions could peak sometime this decade because of the rapid spread of solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles. But so far, those technologies have only partly satisfied the world’s steadily growing demand for energy. That means countries have kept burning more oil, coal and gas to fill the gap.
“Solar and wind is displacing fossil fuels in some countries, but then you have other countries where the economies are growing too strongly for renewables to keep up,” said Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Oslo and one of the authors of the report.
“When you put the whole global sum together, fossil fuels are still winning,” Dr. Peters said. “An emissions peak could be around the corner, but we haven’t seen it yet.”
At last year’s climate talks in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, representatives from nearly every nation approved a pact that called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” and accelerating climate action this decade. But that agreement was vague on how to do so and on which countries should do what. To bring global warming to a halt, nations would need to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere altogether.
A relatively small number of countries account for the majority of the world’s emissions, with China responsible for 32 percent, the United States 13 percent, India 8 percent and the European Union 6 percent.
Europe’s emissions are expected to decline by roughly 3.8 percent this year, the report said. That’s partly because wind and solar power have rapidly displaced coal in the electricity sector. But the decline was also partly driven by weaker economic growth, as energy-intensive industries like steel and fertilizer scaled back production after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused natural gas prices to spike.
In the United States, carbon dioxide emissions are expected to drop modestly this year, by around 0.6 percent. America’s emissions from coal are now at their lowest levels in more than 120 years as utilities continue to retire their older coal-burning power plants.
At the same time, however, U.S. electricity demand has soared to record highs as a result of scorching summer heat waves and a rapid build-out of data centers. That has led to record demand for natural gas, which emits about half as much carbon dioxide as coal when burned for energy.
China, the world’s largest emitter, saw a small increase in emissions this year of around 0.2 percent. That’s a notable shift from the past few decades, when China was building hundreds of coal plants to fuel breakneck growth and carbon dioxide emissions were rising sharply each year. But experts say it is too soon to say whether Chinese emissions might be on the verge of peaking.
In recent years, China has built more solar arrays, wind farms and electric vehicles than any other country. At the same time, China’s rate of economic growth has slowed, with sectors like construction and heavy industry cooling off after decades of rapid expansion.
“If these trends continue and renewable power keeps up the pace, it’s conceivable that emissions will decline or at least stay flat after 2024,” said Jan Ivar Korsbakken, a senior researcher at CICERO who studies Chinese emissions. But he also cautioned that some forecasters had expected China’s emissions to decline this year, and that didn’t happen.
In India, fossil fuel emissions are expected to increase by 4.6 percent, the largest single driver of the growth in carbon dioxide globally. India recently surpassed the European Union as the world’s third-largest emitter, although its per person emissions are just one-third those of Europe.
In the rest of the world, emissions increased roughly 1.1 percent this year. International air travel and shipping also increased rapidly, though both are still below levels in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic.
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