Global CO2 emissions reach record values
Meteorologist, PhD
Friday, December 14, 2018, 5:39 PM - Global carbon emissions are again on the rise, after a 2014-2016 period of little or no increase, which left scientists thinking we had finally plateaued.
However, recent data from 2017 and 2018 serves as a reminder of the need to accelerate and intensify proposed climate action agreements in order to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions.
Behind the most recent CO2 report published, is a group of experts which are part of the "Global Carbon Project" (GCP), a research group formed to work with the international research community and study greenhouse gas emissions to ultimately stop them.
The renowned team of scientists anticipates that global CO2 emissions coming from fossil fuel combustion due to human activities will reach a new record at 37.000 million tons this year.
This is an increase of 2.7 per cent over 2017 emissions, a year when values had already risen 1.6 per cent over to 2016.
CO2, which is measured in ppm (parts per million), is expected to rise to unprecedented contemporary levels. Towards the end of 2018 we are already measuring global concentration values near 407 ppm -- that is 45 per cent higher than during the pre-industrial period.
Meanwhile, world demand for energy is surpassing the mighty increase of renewable energies and energy efficiency, and all this is happening while the watch keeps on ticking. In the U.S. alone, CO2 emissions are projected to escalate by 2.5 per cent in 2018, after a decade of descents. The steep increase this year is conditioned by an economy that is more fuel and natural gas dependent, but also due to extreme weather events. After a colder-than-average winter and warmer summer, exceptional heating and cooling have pushed up fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.
While petroleum consumption in the U.S. is on track to a 1 per cent increase in 2018 compared to 2017, carbon use in both Canada and the U.S. has decreased 40 per cent since 2005. Pressure from the automotive market to introduce more efficient vehicles, together with health related campaigns favoring cleaner air, are pushing many countries around the globe to invest in natural gas, solar or wind energies. The world is pushing coal aside, but there is a long way to go before we can reach this same level of commitment with petrol and natural gas.
And while a tremendous effort is being made in developed countries to continue with the downward trend of burning fossil fuels, other countries with growing economies are rowing in the opposite direction and counteracting any positive results. In countries like China and India, we are seeing an increase in the implementation of renewable energy sources like solar or wind. But, their fast population growth demands more energy, and eventually this eclipses the positive actions they have been pursuing to become more sustainable and less impactful.
The bars in this figure represent CO2 emissions for each year in PgC yr-1 over the globe. CarbonTracker models four types of surface-to-atmosphere exchange of CO2, each of which is shown in a different color: fossil fuel emissions (tan), terrestrial biosphere flux excluding fires (green), direct emissions from fires (red), and air-sea gas exchange (blue). Negative emissions indicate that the flux removes CO2 from the atmosphere. The net surface exchange, computed as the sum of these four components, is shown as a thick black line.
Almost all economies in the world are growing, and as a result CO2 emissions are too, but China (5 per cent) and India (7 per cent) lead the way when it comes to the greatest increase in emissions this year. Meanwhile, renewable energy continues to grow on a global scale to the point that by 2030, projections from GCP indicate that half of the worlds electricity will be produced from clean energy sources. The issue however, is that the growth rate of renewable energy is not sufficient to meet the global energy demand of our accelerated population growth.
Despite the complexity of the situation, experts are optimistic about reaching a free-carbon world by 2050. It's not impossible yet, and all we really need is for renewable energy and other low carbon technologies to grow exponentially, while the impact of climate change remains in a more lineal mode.
