Extract from ABC News
Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels have increased over the past year despite most of the world committing to net zero targets, according to new research.
The Global Carbon Project releases its carbon budget each year, with this year's figures showing a 1.1 per cent increase in emissions across the world.
The report found there was no sign of the rapid and deep decrease in total emissions needed to prevent dangerous climate change.
CSIRO chief research scientist and executive director of the Global Carbon Project Pep Canadell said despite a slowdown in emissions growth, the world was not moving fast enough to reduce emissions.
"We need more renewable energy, we need it faster, we need it bigger, we need it everywhere, we need everything," Dr Canadell said.
"But we will not solve the climate problem unless at the same time we bring fossil fuel emissions down very, very quickly."
There was some good news, with emissions falling in some regions, including Europe and the United States, but it was not enough to offset the increases in places such as China, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Australia.
The fall in the US was driven largely by a decline in the use of coal, with emissions from coal dropping to levels last seen in 1903.
But emissions from coal globally were at record highs and they are expected to grow as India and China continue building new coal-fired power stations.
The carbon budget report found atmospheric CO2 levels were projected to average 419.3 parts per million in 2023, 51 per cent above pre-industrial levels.
Global fossil CO2 emissions are now 6 per cent higher than they were in 2015, the year the global community committed to keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius under the Paris Agreement.
"We continually see record growth in clean energy, but we have failed to put sufficient controls on the growth of fossil fuels and therefore CO2 emissions just keep rising," said Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research.
"Net zero has become the common catchphrase for doing something on climate but at its core is the necessity to reduce CO2 emissions to near zero."
"If countries and companies are not radically reducing CO2 emissions, then they are in no way consistent with the scientific concept of net zero emissions."
Emissions from land-use change such as deforestation are projected to decrease slightly but they are still too high to be offset by current levels of reforestation.
While emissions from bushfires contributed to the global increase, due to an extreme wildfire season in Canada, where emissions were six to eight times higher than average.
Technology-based carbon dioxide removal was a drop in the ocean, amounting to just 0.01 million tonnes of CO2, more than a million times smaller than current emissions.
The study also estimated the remaining carbon budget — how much the world can emit before breaching the 1.5C target.
It found the world was overspending on its emissions budget consistently over multiple years, with a 50 per cent chance global warming would exceed 1.5C consistently in about seven years.
While those estimates are subject to uncertainties the report said it was clear time was running out fast to limit the worst impacts of climate change.
No comments:
Post a Comment