Global carbon dioxide emissions set to rise 0.8% over 2023, India’s contribution to go up 4.6% – EQ

In Short : Global carbon dioxide emissions are projected to rise by 0.8% in 2023, with India’s contribution increasing by 4.6%. This uptick is largely driven by higher energy demand and increased fossil fuel consumption in major economies. India’s rise in emissions is attributed to rapid economic growth, urbanization, and energy needs, despite efforts to transition to renewable energy. The trend underscores the challenge of balancing development with climate goals, highlighting the need for accelerated investments in clean energy and energy efficiency to curb emissions globally.

In Detail : While countries have congregated in Baku, Azerbaijan to deliberate on the ways to cut carbon emissions, a peer-reviewed report by a scientist collective has found that carbon emissions are set to rise 0.8% in 2024 since last year. This is lower than the 1.2% rise in 2023, over 2022.

In 2023, the largest absolute contributions to global fossil CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions were from China (31%), the United States (13%), India (8%), and the EU 27 (7%). These four regions account for 59% of global fossil CO2 emissions, while the rest of the world contributed 41%. EU-27 represents 27 of the most economically developed European countries.

The global per-capita fossil CO2 emissions in 2023 were 1.3 tonnes of carbon per person per year. They were 3.9 in the U.S., 2.3 for China, 1.5 for the EU-27 and 0.6 for India.

Fossil emissions by the end of the year are expected to increase by 4.6% in India and 0.2% in China — though these are strictly not comparable in absolute terms and the bases are incomparable. By the year end, China is expected to emit 12 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, compared to India’s 3.2 billion tonnes and the United State’s 4.9 billion tonnes, which is a 0.6% decrease over the previous year.

The Global Carbon Budget (GCB), as this collective of approximately 120 scientists is called, publishes annual peer-reviewed estimates of changes in atmospheric carbon and the broad causes driving those changes.

Emissions from coal, oil and gas in 2024 are expected to be slightly above their 2023 levels (by 0.2%, 0.9% and 2.4% respectively). Global CO2 emissions from land-use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) averaged 1.1 billion tonnes of carbon per year, the report noted.

The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 422.5 ppm (parts per million) in 2024, which is 52% above pre-industrial levels.

“The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked,” said Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, of University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, who led the study. In a statement, “Time is running out to meet the Paris Agreement goals — and world leaders meeting at COP29 must bring about rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions to give us a chance of staying well below 2°C warming above pre-industrial levels.”

While the Paris Agreement explicitly states that the world must strive to prevent temperatures from exceeding 2°C of pre-industrial levels, global conversation since 2020 has moved towards the section of the Agreement’s that says to “strive to keep it below 1.5°C”. Several countries’ voluntary carbon reduction actions, called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), at least on paper, project reducing emissions aligned with a 1.5°C pathway. However, the GCB report is pessimistic.

This study estimates that there is a 50% chance that the remaining “carbon budget”, or the quantity of carbon that can be held in the atmosphere before the 1.5°C target is breached consistently in about six years. In January 2024, the mean global temperature when recorded over the previous 12 months, crossed the 1.5°C mark. “This estimate is subject to large uncertainties…however, it is clear that the remaining carbon budget — and therefore the time left to meet the 1.5°C target and avoid the worst impacts of climate change — has almost run out,” the authors note.