💾 Archived View for gmi.noulin.net › mobileNews › 5916.gmi captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The world s carbon-dioxide emissions have stabilised
But they need to fall to have a real impact on climate change
Mar 16th 2016
IT COULD be a rare piece of good news in the battle against global warming. The
International Energy Agency (IEA), the world s most prominent energy
forecaster, said on March 16th that carbon-dioxide emissions from burning
fossil fuels have remained flat for two years in a row. Emissions from the
world s two biggest polluters, America and China, have been falling. The world
has not seen such a lull since the early 1980s.
The IEA s provisional findings will fan a debate about whether global emissions
have peaked. China, after all, is trying to rebalance its economy away from
heavily polluting industries towards services. But analysts say two years is
too short a period to be considered a lasting trend. What is more, the IEA is
relying on data that many economists question. If China s official growth
figures are exaggerated, then it would not be becoming less carbon intensive as
fast as it seems.
The IEA said the world s energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide stood at
32.1 billion tonnes last year, for the second year running. This is the first
time they have remained flat during a period of economic expansion in more than
40 years. Fatih Birol, the IEA s director, says the three main drivers were a
big growth of renewable-energy use in global power generation, led by wind
turbines; a switch in America from coal-fired plants to natural-gas-fuelled
ones after the shale revolution and a government-led effort in China to curb
emissions due to concerns about pollution as well as climate change.
Mr Birol says the rapid deployment of renewables is good news; it tallies with
the IEA s best-case scenario for tackling global warming and shows emissions
are decoupling from economic growth . But he expresses concern that the
progress will be ephemeral: the low prices of natural gas and coal may
undermine new investment in wind and solar power. They may also slow the trend
toward improved energy efficiency.
The IEA s most contentious finding is that emissions from China, the world s
biggest polluter, dropped 1.5% last year. Some experts will see this as
evidence that China s emissions will peak within a decade, if they haven t
already. The Chinese government, though, has insisted its emissions will
continue to grow until 2030. In a report this month Fergus Green and Nicholas
Stern of the London School of Economics said the official projections should be
taken with a pinch of salt, since the government prefers to under-promise and
over-deliver.
Richard Black of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a British
think-tank, says the improvement in China represents a huge turnaround , and
that its replacement of coal with renewable energy is likely to continue.
However Michael Levi of America s Council on Foreign Relations notes that the
United States is still emerging from a period of deep economic weakness, China
is restructuring and India is quickly developing, so the conditions that have
brought emissions to a standstill may swiftly dissipate. He says that carbon
dioxide emissions will need to fall to have a meaningful impact on climate
change. The first step towards reducing emissions is stabilising them, but it
s still only a first step.