No, global greenhouse gas emissions aren’t shrinking yet

But more importantly, emissions reductions are happening at time when the global economy is still growing. Using an obviously incomplete dataset for 2015, they project a decrease of 0.6 percent (with error bars from a 1.6 percent decline to 0.5 percent growth), even as global GDP increased.

“After a decade of rapid growth, China’s emissions rate slowed to 1.2 per cent in 2014 and is expected to drop by 3.9 per cent in 2015”, she added.

Lead author and Stanford University’s professor Rob Jackson said, “If India’s emissions continue under the current trend, they will match the EU’s emissions before 2020”.

Global greenhouse gas emissions have risen at 2.4 percent every year since 2000, where nations such as China and India relied on coal and fossil fuels to boost their economies.

The fall-off is due to reduced coal use in China, as well as faster uptake of renewables, the scientists involved in the assessment add.

Other co-authors of the report are Robbie Andrew, Jan Ivar Korsbakken and Glen Peters, Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (Norway); and Nebojsa Nakicenovic, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Austria).

The historic agreement would aim to slash carbon emissions with the goal of limiting global warming to at least two degrees.

The UEA and Global Carbon Project said their projection for 2015 is based on available energy consumption data in China and the United States, as well as forecast economic growth for the rest of the world.

The flattening curve of global carbon dioxide emissions is largely the result of China’s increasing reliance on solar and wind power as it turns away from coal to power its cities and industries, Jackson said. The world’s biggest carbon emitter plans to upgrade coal power plants over the next five years to tackle the problem and says its emissions will peak by around 2030 before starting to decline. “An acceleration in the transformation of energy use and production is needed to set global emissions on course to complete decarbonization, as required for climate stabilization”. The surprising findings were published as 195 nations entered the final phase of U.N. talks for an accord to roll back carbon emissions, blamed for unsafe climate change.

The report shows that China remains the largest emitter with 9.7 billion tonnes, followed by the USA (5.6), the European Union (3.4) and India (2.6) – together accounting for nearly 60 % of global emissions.

Earlier this year, for the first time since records began, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reached a record global average of 400 parts per million – the highest level in over 650,000 years.