Extract from The Guardian
Who has been taking steps to improve and who really has not?
SSE Hydro, part of the Scottish Event Campus, where the Cop26 summit will be held.
Last modified on Mon 1 Nov 2021 19.02 AEDT
As world leaders descend on Glasgow for vital United Nations Cop26 climate talks, seen as one of the last chances to prevent environmental breakdown, they will try their utmost to be seen to be taking action. But when it comes to the data, where do the biggest polluters really stand?
To help get a clearer picture, the Guardian has created data profiles for individual countries, using the most recent available data from the UN, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), IEA Statistics and Climate Action Tracker (CAT). The information is broken down into five key categories: total greenhouse gas emissions, greenhouse gas emissions per capita, modern renewables share in final energy consumption, any current net zero target and CAT rating.
At the top of the leaderboard for total emissions is China, which is rated “highly insufficient” by CAT, and has a net zero target of “before 2060”. And in second place is the US, which in 2019 emitted 19.77 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per capita of greenhouse gases.
The UK, co-host of Cop26, is rated “almost sufficient” by CAT, but despite being home to the world’s largest offshore wind energy market, in 2019 its renewable energy share was only 12.2% – considerably lower than the overall EU figure of 18.2% and far behind other European countries including the other co-host Italy (17.3%), Portugal (28.2%) and Norway (62.4%). Meanwhile, big polluters Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, none of which have set net zero targets, were among those classed as “critically insufficient”.
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