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GLASGOW – After falling sharply last year, global fossil fuel emissions have rebounded sharply in 2021 and are now slightly below previous record levels, researchers said Wednesday. This is another sign that countries are still far from their goals of avoiding the worst effects of global warming.
In 2020, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry fell 5.4 percent worldwide as businesses closed and governments ordered people to stay at home during the coronavirus outbreak. This was the biggest drop in a year on record.
But experts had long warned that the decline would be temporary, and new data suggest that Published by the Global Carbon Project, confirms. In 2021, emissions are expected to increase by 4.9 percent as the global economy is revived and lockdowns are greatly relaxed.
Overall, global emissions are now less than 1 percent below their previous high in 2019, suggesting that any climate impact of the pandemic is short-lived.
“In fact, we shut down the global economy and then brought it back to life in much the same way as the fossil fuel-powered cars, trucks, factories and power plants we had before,” said climate scientist Pierre Friedlingstein of the University of Exeter. Who led the research? “We can’t just pause the economy during a pandemic if we want to see a sustained decline in global emissions. We have to change these systems.”
New emissions figures were announced during the A major United Nations climate summit in GlasgowIt’s where world leaders discuss how to accelerate efforts to combat climate change, proposing new measures to protect forests and reduce methane emissions. But the data highlight the challenges many nations face as they rapidly move away from reliance on fossil fuels.
When the coronavirus pandemic first hit, many environmentalists and even some world leaders suggested Nations should seize the opportunity to shift the global economy to cleaner energy sources and prevent emissions from jumping too sharply. But with a few exceptions, most countries have largely squandered their chances of a “green recovery”.
A final report A study from the United Nations found that while the world’s nations spent more than $16 trillion on stimulus measures last year, they were largely focused on reviving the traditional fossil fuel-dependent parts of their economies as quickly as possible, with less than one-fifth spending. Recovery funds used to promote low-carbon alternatives.
The United States might change this picture a bit if the Democrats in Congress, in its current incarnation, pass a massive spending bill. includes spending about $555 billion on clean energy technologies. But lawmakers are still debating over the fate of this bill.
“I think the world is missing a real opportunity to change direction,” said Rob Jackson, professor of earth system science at Stanford who is also contributing to the new emissions research. “As it is difficult to completely change the global energy system in a single year, we could have seen emissions come back this year anyway, but we could have adjusted ourselves much better for years to come.”
The analysis contained some good news: When emissions from land use and deforestation are included, after a rapid increase in the early 2000s, global carbon dioxide emissions appear to have remained more or less stable over the past decade, with nations making slow progress in bending the emissions curve.
Stanford’s Dr. Jackson warned that global fossil fuel emissions are still highly likely to hit a record high by 2022, as several key sectors such as ground transportation and aviation have not fully recovered from the pandemic.
“We don’t appear to have reached peak emissions globally yet,” he said. “And remember, it’s not enough for emissions to peak and then plateau. If we want to stop the planet from continuing to warm, emissions have to go to zero.”
New data shows just how big of a task this will be. In 2020, carbon dioxide emissions fell by about 1.9 billion tons globally. But to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – a threshold many scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst effects Emissions from heat waves, droughts, forest fires and flooding – will have to drop an average of 1.4 billion tons each year between now and 2050.
Dr. “This shows you the magnitude of action that is really needed,” Friedlingstein said.
Relatively few countries are responsible for the majority of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and currently China is responsible for 31 percent, the USA 14 percent, the European Union 7 percent and India 7 percent.
Emissions produced by the United States and the European Union have declined steadily over the past decade, in part as coal plants have been shut down and more renewable energy has been added. And the pandemic doesn’t seem to have fundamentally changed that trajectory: While emissions rose roughly 7.6 percent in both places in 2021 and coal use has returned in the United States this year, the recovery wasn’t enough to offset larger declines. and emissions remain below 2019 levels in both locations.
The story is a little different in China and India. Emissions in China are 5.4 percent above 2019 levels, thanks in part to an increase in electricity and coal use for industry. In India, emissions are 4.4 percent higher than before the coronavirus pandemic. Although their leaders have pledged to ramp up investment in renewable energy over the next decade, both countries appear to be on track to hit record levels of coal consumption this year.
The analysis found that for the rest of the world combined, emissions were still below 2019 levels.
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