China’s dramatic rise in renewable energy use has helped cause global greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels to slow for the first time in almost 15 years and could show a modest decline when final numbers are in for 2015, according to a multinational report led by a Stanford scientist.
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Canadell said that despite global economic growth in 2015, worldwide emission from fossil fuels is expected to decline by 0.6 percent, the first decline since the global financial crisis in 2008.
A lead author of the GCP study, Professor Corinne Le Quere said: “It is unlikely that emissions have peaked for good”. Economic growth there has slowed (but not stopped) recently, and significant efforts to move away from a dirtier industrial economy, and away from the use of coal, contributed to a projected 3.9 decrease in emissions for 2015, according to the researchers.
Tim Osborn, a climate researcher at UEA, said: “Lower-than-expected Carbon dioxide emissions in 2015 are welcome, but 2015 emissions are still higher than in every year up to 2013 and Carbon dioxide is still accumulating in the atmosphere because we are adding it (through our emissions) more quickly than natural processes are able to remove it from the atmosphere and store it in the oceans and forests”.
The GCP report found Australia emitted over 1 per cent of the world’s total carbon emissions from fossil fuels – the equivalent of 0.38 billion tonnes – making it the 17th largest contributor globally.
Dr Canadell said global greenhouse gas emissions were around 60 per cent higher today than when the United Nations climate negotiations first began in 1990.
“What we are now seeing is that emissions appear to have stalled and they could even decline in 2015”, she said.
“I’m not optimistic that we’re near a peak”, Zou Ji, a deputy director general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, said in the same Times story. Just in the a year ago, 40 gigawatts worth of solar-powered energy production was installed around the world.
Global carbon emissions from fossil-fuel burning have been growing at an annual rate of 2.4 per cent over the past decade, contributing to steadily rising levels of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.
He cautioned that it was too soon to say if the planet’s carbon emissions had turned a corner as result of the projected 0.6 global decrease, believing more climbs were likely in the future unless all countries pledged to take stronger action against climate change. But John Holdren, the science adviser to the White House, says whether the decline is a blip or more permanent, it suggests that a real decline in emissions is within reach.
Still, some leaders cheered the study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The news comes as nations meet at the COP21 climate change conference in Paris to hammer out a deal to reduce emissions.
Their aim is to cut emissions enough to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius by 2100.
The study said declining coal use in China has driven down emissions around the world. We’ve at least made some progress on other wedges, like reducing deforestation, but others-like nuclear energy and the capture and storage of carbon emissions-have pretty much gone nowhere.
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“Many businesses seem to have forgotten how to innovate, or are delaying innovation until they get a policy silver bullet”, said Bertrand van Ee, chief executive of the Climate-KIC.
