LONDON – Energy-related carbon emissions are up nearly 5% this year, according to the International Energy Agency, reversing most of last year’s decline caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
In the IEA’s Global Energy Review 2021, published on Tuesday, the group said global energy-related CO2 emissions would increase to 33 billion metric tons this year, an increase of 1.5 billion tons from 2020 levels.
It would reflect the largest increase in emissions since 2010 and the second increase in history.
“This is a terrible warning that the economic recovery from the Covid crisis is currently anything but sustainable for our climate,” Fatih Birol, IEA executive director, said in the report.
“Unless governments around the world move forward quickly to start reducing emissions, we are likely to face an even worse situation in 2022,” he added.
The report comes at a time when policymakers are pushing hard to deliver on promises made under the Paris Agreement.
President Joe Biden will hold a virtual summit this week to discuss the climate emergency with dozens of world leaders, with global talks taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, in early November.
Yet, even as politicians and business leaders publicly acknowledge the need to move to a low-carbon society, hopes of limiting global warming (and achieving a crucial global goal) are rapidly deteriorating.
Nearly 200 countries ratified the Paris climate agreement at COP21 in 2015, agreeing to limit the increase in the planet’s average temperature to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and continue efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
It remains a key focus ahead of COP26, although some climate scientists now believe reaching the 1.5-degree Celsius target is already “virtually impossible.”
“A growing gap”
“During the Covid crisis, a lot of people thought that humans would be much more environmentally oriented, governments are making one promise after another, and as a result, we would have a cleaner energy system. But the numbers show a picture completely different, ”Birol said. CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe.”
“There’s a growing gap between what governments say, what we read in newspapers, etc., and what’s happening in real life.”
Birol said policymakers need to make clear commitments on how they plan to substantially reduce emissions at the Climate Leaders Summit on Thursday and Friday.
He warned that while the forecast for IEA emissions for 2021 was “disappointing”, the absence of immediate action would mean that next year’s outlook would be “even worse”.
The IEA said this year’s increase in carbon emissions would likely be driven by a resurgence of coal use in the electricity sector, as more than 80% of projected growth will come from Asia, led by China.
Coal use in the US and the European Union is also expected to increase in 2021, according to the IEA, but will remain “well below” pre-crisis levels.