The International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday that global energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide hit a record high last year, although more clean technology such as solar power and electric vehicles helped limit the impact of increased coal and oil use.
Air travel rebounding from the pandemic and more cities turning to coal as a low-cost source of power saw communities around the world emitted more carbon dioxide in 2022 than in any other year on records dating to 1900.
The International Energy Agency report on Thursday shows emissions of the climate-warming gas that were caused by energy production grew 0.9% to reach 36.8 gigatons in 2022. However, emissions were partly offset by a rise in renewable power sources like wind and solar, energy efficiency measures and electric vehicles which helped to avoid an additional 550 million tonnes of CO2 emissions last year, the IEA said.
Scientists have said deep cuts in emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, will be needed over the coming years if targets to limit a global rise in temperatures and prevent runaway climate change are to be met .
“We still see emissions growing from fossil fuels, hindering efforts to meet the world’s climate targets,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a release alongside the report.
Extreme weather events such as droughts reduced the amount of water available for hydropower and increased the need to burn fossil fuels, thereby leading to an intensifed carbon dioxide emissions last year’s while heat waves also drove up demand for electricity.
Following the release of the new report, climate scientists who described it as disconcerting have warned that energy users around the world must cut emissions dramatically to slow the dire consequences of global warming.
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“Any emissions growth — even 1% — is a failure,” said Rob Jackson, a professor of earth system science at Stanford University and chairman of the Global Carbon Project, an international group. “We can’t afford growth. We can’t afford stasis. It’s cuts or chaos for the planet. Any year with higher coal emissions is a bad year for our health and for the Earth.”
Carbon dioxide emissions from coal grew 1.6% last year. Many communities, primarily in Asia, switched from natural gas to coal to avoid high natural gas prices that were worsened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the IEA said.
And as global airline traffic increased, carbon dioxide emissions from burning oil grew 2.5%, with about half the surge resulting from the aviation sector.
Meanwhile, overall global emissions was limited by strict pandemic measures and weak economic growth in China as production was curtailed. And in Europe, the IEA said, electricity generation from wind and solar power exceeded that of gas or nuclear for the first time.
“Without clean energy, the growth in CO2 emissions would have been nearly three times as high,” Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said in a statement.
“However, we still see emissions growing from fossil fuels, hindering efforts to meet the world’s climate targets. International and national fossil fuel companies are making record revenues and need to take their share of responsibility, in line with their public pledges to meet climate goals.”
Story was adapted from AP.
