CO2 emissions set to hit record in 2022 amid Ukraine War

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Global gas emissions from fossil fuels are likely to reach record levels in 2022 and show no signs of declining, researchers said Thursday. The trend puts countries even further away from their goal of curbing global warming.

This year, countries are expected to emit an estimated 36.6 billion tonnes of planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO₂) from burning coal, natural gas and oil for power generation, according to new data from the Global Carbon Project.

That’s 1% more than the world emitted in 2021 and slightly above the previous record in 2019, which came before the coronavirus pandemic caused a temporary drop in global energy use and emissions.

The conclusions were released at COP27, the UN conference on climate change in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where world leaders are meeting to discuss how to avoid catastrophic levels of warming.

Scientists have warned that the world as a whole will need to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by mid-century to stabilize global temperatures and minimize the risks of deadly heat waves, sea level rise and ecosystem collapse.

That deadline is getting harder to meet with each passing year, experts say.

“Every year emissions increase it becomes much more challenging to reduce them again by a certain date,” said Glen Peters, research director at the International Center for Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, Norway. He is one of more than one hundred scientists involved in the research.

Relatively few countries are responsible for most of the world’s fossil fuel emissions, namely: China (32%), United States (14%), European Union (8%) and India (8%).

This year has seen some unusual energy trends, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the lingering effects of the pandemic that have disrupted the global economy.

China’s emissions are expected to fall by about 0.9% this year, their first drop since 2016, as frequent coronavirus lockdowns and slowing real estate development have led to declines in fossil fuel and cement use. Rapid growth in wind and solar has also helped keep China’s demand for coal virtually flat in 2022.

In Europe, emissions are also expected to fall by around 0.8% this year, largely due to a sharp drop in natural gas consumption after Russia cut supplies. This was only partially offset by the increased use of coal, as countries like Germany and Austria restarted long-defunct coal-fired power plants to alleviate the energy deficit.

In the United States, on the other hand, emissions are expected to rise by about 1.5% this year, driven by an increase in natural gas use as the economy revives. Oil emissions also rise as air travel recovers from pandemic lows.

In India, fossil fuel emissions are estimated to increase by almost 6%, the single biggest driver of CO₂ growth globally. India recently overtook the European Union as the world’s third-largest emitter, even though its emissions per capita are only a third of Europe’s.

In the rest of the world, fossil fuel emissions have increased by about 1.7% this year. Emissions from coal are likely to hit record levels, in part because many countries are switching to the highly polluting fuel in response to rising natural gas prices.

A big question is whether fossil fuel emissions will continue to grow in the coming years.

A recent report by the International Energy Agency, a leading forecasting body, says global demand for fossil fuels is likely to peak and then level off sometime this decade. One of the main reasons is that many governments responded to the Ukrainian War by adopting stronger policies to switch off oil, gas and coal.

In the United States, for example, Congress has approved $370 billion in spending for wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear power plants, hydrogen fuels, electric vehicles, and electric heat pumps.

The agency also calculated that this year’s increase in fossil fuel emissions would have been three times greater had it not been for the rapid deployment of wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles around the world.

“Our figures show that the current crisis may well be a turning point in energy history,” said Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director, in a recent interview.

The emissions data released on Thursday contains some good news. The annual amount of carbon dioxide released by deforestation and land use changes appears to have declined over the past two decades, to around 3.9 billion tonnes in 2022. This includes humanity’s total CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels and Land use have remained virtually stable since 2015.

Part of the explanation, the researchers say, is that forests appear to be expanding or recovering in many regions, such as abandoned farmland in Europe. As these trees grow, they absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere. This has helped offset a fraction of the emissions produced by deforestation, which remains stubbornly high in places like Brazil, Indonesia and Congo.

Under the 2015 Paris accord, world leaders agreed to limit total global warming to “well below” 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels, and to go to great lengths to keep warming to 1.5 °C The world has already warmed by 1.1°C, and scientists warn that with every additional fraction of a degree tens of millions more people around the world will be exposed to heatwaves with risks to life, food and water.

The new data shows that the time to reach these goals is running out. If emissions simply remained stable at 2022 levels, the researchers concluded, the world would likely put enough carbon into the atmosphere to exceed the 1.5°C threshold in nine years and exceed the 2°C threshold in 30 years.

“On the current course, without massive cuts in emissions, we will exhaust our remaining carbon budget very quickly,” said Pierre Friedlingstein, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter in the UK who helped lead the research.

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves

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