No rise in CO2 emissions globally for 2nd yr in a row
Subodh Varma
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Trend Being Linked To Surge In Renewable Energy Production
In a surprising bit of good news concerning the bleak climate change scenario, preliminary data shows that global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning of fossil fuels did not increase in 2015.This was the second year in a row when carbon emissions from energy-related use stayed flat.
Burning of fossil fuels contributes nearly twothirds of all carbon dioxide emissions globally with the rest arising from agriculture, deforestation etc.
While this stagnation is welcome news, and an indication that emissions can be controlled, it does not mean that global warming has stalled. That's because there are already excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris on Tuesday , the data pegged 2015 CO2 emissions at 32.1 billion tonnes, virtually the same as in 2014.
This led several experts to claim that economic growth and emissions are no longer coupled or linked to each other because average global economic growth in these two years was over 3% per year, and yet carbon dioxide emissions were not increasing.
“The new figures confirm last year's surprising but welcome news: we now have seen two straight years of greenhouse gas emissions decoupling from economic growth,“ said the energy agency's executive director Fatih Birol.
In absolute terms, the total carbon dioxide release from energy use in 2015 was more than double what it was in 1975, and over a third more than in 2001.But the average 4% per year rate of growth seems to have been checked. The main reason for st alling of CO2 emissions from energy consumption appears to be the surge in renewable energy produc tion, the slowdown in the Chinese economy and re placement of oil with natu ral gas in the United States China and the US are the world's largest emitters.
In 2015, 90% of new elec tricity generation was from renewable sources, with wind energy alone produ cing half of it, preliminary date of the International Energy Agency suggests.
In the more than 40 years that the energy agency has been providing information on carbon dioxide emissions, there have been only four periods when emissions stood still or fell compared to the previous year. Three of those occasions -the early 1980s, 1992 and 2009 -were associated with global economic weakness.
But the current brake on emissions increase is the first time that this has happened during a global economic expansion. However, this link is still tenuous as China did slow down from the zooming growth it has enjoyed in previous years.
In China, emissions de clined by 1.5%, as coal use dropped for the second consecutive year. In 2015, coal generated less than 70% of Chinese electricity , ten percentage points less than four years ago (in 2011).
Over the same period, low-carbon sources jumped from 19% to 28%, with hydro and wind accounting for most of the increase.
In the US, emissions declined by 2%, as a large switch from coal to natural gas use in electricity generation took place.
In the European Union, too, renewables accounted for 15% of energy generation, up from 11% in 2011, according to a report of the EU released recently .
Burning of fossil fuels contributes nearly twothirds of all carbon dioxide emissions globally with the rest arising from agriculture, deforestation etc.
While this stagnation is welcome news, and an indication that emissions can be controlled, it does not mean that global warming has stalled. That's because there are already excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris on Tuesday , the data pegged 2015 CO2 emissions at 32.1 billion tonnes, virtually the same as in 2014.
This led several experts to claim that economic growth and emissions are no longer coupled or linked to each other because average global economic growth in these two years was over 3% per year, and yet carbon dioxide emissions were not increasing.
“The new figures confirm last year's surprising but welcome news: we now have seen two straight years of greenhouse gas emissions decoupling from economic growth,“ said the energy agency's executive director Fatih Birol.
In absolute terms, the total carbon dioxide release from energy use in 2015 was more than double what it was in 1975, and over a third more than in 2001.But the average 4% per year rate of growth seems to have been checked. The main reason for st alling of CO2 emissions from energy consumption appears to be the surge in renewable energy produc tion, the slowdown in the Chinese economy and re placement of oil with natu ral gas in the United States China and the US are the world's largest emitters.
In 2015, 90% of new elec tricity generation was from renewable sources, with wind energy alone produ cing half of it, preliminary date of the International Energy Agency suggests.
In the more than 40 years that the energy agency has been providing information on carbon dioxide emissions, there have been only four periods when emissions stood still or fell compared to the previous year. Three of those occasions -the early 1980s, 1992 and 2009 -were associated with global economic weakness.
But the current brake on emissions increase is the first time that this has happened during a global economic expansion. However, this link is still tenuous as China did slow down from the zooming growth it has enjoyed in previous years.
In China, emissions de clined by 1.5%, as coal use dropped for the second consecutive year. In 2015, coal generated less than 70% of Chinese electricity , ten percentage points less than four years ago (in 2011).
Over the same period, low-carbon sources jumped from 19% to 28%, with hydro and wind accounting for most of the increase.
In the US, emissions declined by 2%, as a large switch from coal to natural gas use in electricity generation took place.
In the European Union, too, renewables accounted for 15% of energy generation, up from 11% in 2011, according to a report of the EU released recently .
Source: Times of India, 18-03-2016
