This article was written by Nina Chestney from Reuters and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
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“Last year, the global economy grew while global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels stayed flat”, US President Barack Obama said in Paris on the opening day of the two-week talks. This is the first two-year period in a multi-decade record where the global economy shows clear signs of decoupling from fossil fuel emissions. This time is different.
If the new figures are a fillip for delegates from 180 countries trying to hammer out a global climate accord in Paris, they may inadvertently provide industry with a new excuse to prolong the transition to low carbon technology and methods.
High-level negotiations The report was published on the first day of the crucial high-level negotiations at Le Bourget aimed at reaching a global accord that will offer a robust response to climate change. “This year we expect total emissions to flatten or drop slightly, despite strong growth in gross domestic product worldwide”. The research projects that emissions could drop about 0.6 percent in 2015 even as global GDP continues to climb.
Currently, India – the fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2014 – emits as much carbon as China did in 1990. Global emissions fell during the last big recession. Despite the slowing of Carbon dioxide emissions globally, the research highlights that the amount of Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has now reached 400 parts per million, its highest level in at least 800,000 years.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the conventional wisdom has been that economic decline comes with a decline in fossil fuel consumption.
“It could begin to look like a peak in emissions after Paris if the agreement is very strong”.
Most likely not. One key uncertainty in answering this question is the future of coal in China. While emissions in the United States and the European Union dropped this year, the real reason global carbon output is down is because of China ” s sweeping cuts in coal use. “In 2014, more than half of new energy needs in China were met from renewable sources such as hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar power”. China s worth of per capita carbon emissions of 7.1, 6.8 s watching the EU.
In the run-up to the COP21 summit, officials from the world’s most populous country pledged that their emissions would peak in 2030.
A new study at UM has found that global plant growth hasn’t increased much as scientists formerly predicted.
“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. This, in particular, is important to note when setting limits on gas emissions. “We just don’t know where India is going to go over the next 20 years”. “There is a long way to near zero emissions”.
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In the past year, the Asian giant installed 23 gigawatts (GW) of new wind capacity, and its overall solar capacity has jumped from 3.7 GW in 2004 to 178 GW in 2014. These trends are not stopping here.
