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Warning for climate negotiators as carbon emissions hit new high

Global carbon dioxide emissions are accelerating at their fastest pace in seven years and hit a record high in 2018, despite pledges by nearly 200 countries to limit global warming to well below 2℃.

Carbon emissions rose 2.7 per cent in 2018 mainly due to emissions growth in China, India and the US, according to research published on Wednesday.

The data, published simultaneously in the scientific journals Nature, Earth System Science Data, and Environmental Research Letters, come as the annual UN climate talks are under way in Katowice, Poland.

The rise in emissions is a dramatic change from recent years, and underscores how challenging it will be for countries to meet the commitments of the 2015 Paris climate accord, a global pact to combat climate change. It dashes the hopes of many economists who had argued that economic growth was “decoupling” from global emissions growth, back when emissions appeared to be flattening out.

After a plateau in global emissions from 2014-16, and an increase of 1.6 per cent in 2017, the rise this year is largely due to growth in fossil fuel consumption, according to Glen Peters, research director at the Cicero Centre for International Climate Research in Oslo.

Signatories to the Paris agreement pledged to limit global warming to “well below” 2C and pursue efforts to keep it less than 1.5C, without agreeing on an exact temperature target.

However if today’s policies were to continue, it would be closer to 3C of warming by the end of the century, according to the latest UN climate report.

Corinne Le Quéré, professor of climate change science at the University of East Anglia and lead researcher for the study, pointed out that emissions would need to fall by 50 per cent by 2030 and reach zero by 2050 in order to limit global warming to 1.5C.

The latest data show that a peak in emissions is “not yet in sight” she said.

Global coal consumption peaked in 2013, but the growth in coal this year and in 2017 mean that peak could be shortlived.

China accounts for nearly half of the growth in emissions in 2018. Chinese coal consumption is expected to rise 4.5 per cent this year, with natural gas consumption surging 18 per cent, according to the research.

Chinese emissions “have really bounced back this year,” said Mr Peters. “The strongest causation is the economic stimulus — the government keeps propping up the economy by construction, and construction needs more coal and cement.”

In the US, the surge in emissions in 2018 is mainly due to weather — an unusually cold winter and warm summer meant that power demand was higher than normal. Meanwhile in India, additional coal and renewables are all being added simultaneously to meet the country’s growing demand for energy.

One of the reasons the UN climate talks are a challenging process is disagreement over which countries bear what responsibility for cutting their emissions in the future. Although China is the single biggest emitter in the world today, accounting for 27 per cent of global emissions, the US and the EU are much bigger emitters on a cumulative basis.

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