Copyright The Boston Globe
Fossil fuel emissions are projected to rise by 1.1 percent, amounting to 38.1 billion metric tons of fossil carbon dioxide emissions in one year, the report found. “These findings are in line with recent years, showing a regional shift in fossil fuel emissions but with an overall continuing increase,” said Anna Michalak, founding director of the Carnegie Climate and Resilience Hub at the Carnegie Institution for Science, who studies the cycling and emissions of greenhouse gases. The report comes as world leaders descend on Brazil for the 30th United Nations Climate Conference. The United States, one of the planet’s top emitters, is noticeably absent and lobbying behind the scenes to thwart climate diplomacy efforts. Past conferences have seen aspirational pledges that appear, a decade later, unobtainable. “The world has not been able to meet the ambitious goals outlined in the Paris agreement,” said Michalak, referring to the 2015 U.N. climate conference that culminated in the signing of a treaty aiming to limit warming to 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels. That threshold is all but out of reach. The International Energy Agency warns in another new report, which tracks the energy transition and global emissions, that under the current policies countries around the world are following to meet their energy needs, the planet will warm nearly 3 degrees Celsius by 2100. Even as nations follow through with more aggressive clean energy policies that they have indicated they intend to pursue - with coal and oil demand peaking by 2030 - warming would still be close to 2.5 degrees, according to the report. That rapid pace of warming plays out despite a scale-up of renewable energy around the globe and a surge in electric vehicle sales. Driving warming down to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100 at this point, according to the IEA report, would require considerable changes in the types of energy the world uses, as well as mass deployment of nascent carbon capture technologies that have so far proven technologically difficult, politically contentious and extremely costly to scale up. And recent years have seen record-high fossil fuel emissions, leaving some experts hesitant to predict a peak in output, even amid this shift to other sources of clean energy. “The expectation is that Chinese and global fossil co2 emissions should peak soon based on growth in renewable energy,” said Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate Research and one of the Carbon Budget report’s authors. “But emissions keep growing, making the peak always seem like it is one year away.” He added: “Eventually, emissions will peak. We just don’t know when.” Each country’s annual fossil carbon emissions trends tell a different story of both weather patterns and energy usage, said Peters. China’s emissions have been rapidly increasing, but in the last two years they’ve virtually plateaued as the country has invested in more renewable energy. Its emissions are set to increase by 0.4 percent, a marked decline in expected growth compared to recent years. India’s emissions are set to increase by 1.4 percent, also a decline compared to recent trends. That could be attributed to an early monsoon season, which curbed hot spells and air conditioning demands. Meanwhile, a decline in emissions was reversed this year in the European Union due to colder weather and higher heating demands. It was also less windy, meaning less wind energy was produced. The United States, where emissions are projected to grow by 1.9 percent, saw an average winter after two mild winters, so heating demand went up. And natural gas prices were higher because of the push to export more gas, meaning coal usage increased, said Peters. “We have reason to be concerned,” he added, pointing to the Trump administration’s rollback of environmentally friendly policies and a looming demand for more energy linked to data centers for blockchain and artificial intelligence companies. Michalak urged caution in interpreting country-level emissions. “Manufacturing, food production and other economic activities are shifting globally,” she said. “This means that goods consumed in one country might appear as emissions in another.” Also evident in the carbon budget report is how the world’s natural barriers to global warming continue to weaken. Each year roughly half of the greenhouse gases that people emit is absorbed by the earth and the sea. But the planet’s ability to sink some of that carbon appears to be weakening as climate change worsens, said Pierre Friedlingstein, the report’s lead author and a professor at the University of Exeter. Friedlingstein develops global models to try to understand the interaction between climate systems, climate change and the global carbon cycle. “The more warming we have in the future, the less the system is efficient in removing Co2,” he said. Friedlingstein noted some positive takeaways from their year of research: Deforestation is down in some parts of the world, though the practice has still contributed to emissions, as have climate-fueled forest fires. And behemoth global emitters like India and China are trending down, he added. Peters noted at least 35 countries’ emissions have decreased over the last decade even while their economy has grown. He pointed out a notable increase in solar and wind power in many developing countries. “It’s bleak because we know that we’re running out of time,” Friedlingstein said. “But we can still see progress and try to emphasize the positive side.”
