Emissions from a power plant in China.
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“Unlike past periods with little or no emissions growth, global gross domestic product (GDP) grew substantially in both years”, they wrote.
The UN hopes the Paris summit will result in an agreement that will eventually lead to a 2C cap on global temperature compared with pre-industrial levels – a threshold most scientists regard as relatively safe. However, new research from the Institute on the Environment published today in Nature Climate Change adds to a growing body of research challenging this expectation. Nations like China have enormous populations, and therefore very large amounts of total carbon emitted each year – nearly 9 billion metric tons of CO2 in 2013, or approximately 28 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. That’s the most exciting piece of this puzzle: “We’re seeing a flattening or decline in emissions at a time when the global economy is still growing robustly”.
Even if global emissions haven’t peaked, there’s no disputing that 2015 is one for the history books.
However, it is quite unlikely that 2015 is the much-sought-after global peak in emissions which will lead us down the decarbonisation path required to stabilise the climate.
Cleveland said action needs to be taken to reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere.
“Perhaps [we will see] a few plateaus here and there over the next while, before we ultimately [see] peak emissions”.
“We could say 10 per cent of yearly procurement has to be for novel technologies or methods”, he said. “The hard work is just beginning”. In 2014, for example, the rise in emissions out of India completely offset a big emissions drop achieved in the European Union.
China pledged to peak Carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and increase green energy use, but the country has given no firm plan on making actual cuts to emissions. She said emissions could go up or down a bit from now on.
It is the world’s largest producer of wind energy, and it’s using less coal, the authors say.
“We saw slower global growth in petroleum in 2014 and faster growth in renewables”, said Stanford’s Prof. “The science shows we need to reconfigure the economy in-line with the 2°C trajectory, and innovation must sit at the centre of the transition”.
Administrator Gina McCarthy speaks during an interview at the COP21, the United Nations Climate Change Conference Monday, Dec. 7, 2015 in Le Bourget, north of Paris.
Other scientists unaffiliated with the study said the paper focuses mainly on good news and ignores the bad news in the data it presents.
The authors cautioned that this year’s “pause” is not likely to last, as developing economies in India and elsewhere around the world are projected to increase emissions from coal and oil in the coming decades. “An acceleration in the transformation of energy use and production is needed”.
“The drop in global emissions this year is mostly caused by China”.
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No solution has been found yet for that problem, he said. Those efforts are aimed at coal because “coal is the criminal for that and they are reducing lots of coal consumption in the urban areas where most of the industry is based”, he said.
