CO2 emissions ‘to stall, even decline’ in 2015

While emissions plateau during global economic recessions, this is the first time in modern times that emissions have dropped during a period of robust economic growth.

Corinne Le Quere of the University of East Anglia, the lead author of the study, said the carbon emissions have stalled, and they could even decline slightly.

Dr Canadell said this would be a wake-up call for Australia’s mining industry, which has relied on coal exports to China to fuel the country’s energy needs.

Earth System Science Data finds that China is by far the world’s top Carbon dioxide emitter, responsible for 27-30 percent of global emissions, followed by the United States (15 percent), the European Union (10 percent) and India (7 percent).

 According to Professor Le Quere, emissions will need to be brought down to zero to stabilise the climate. The country covers around 1 percent of the global carbon emissions, emitting 0.38 billion tonnes, making it the 14th largest contributor worldwide. But China is pushing to achieve peak carbon consumption as early as possible (and emissions by 2030), and to phase out the dirtiest types of coal from the nation’s energy mix, largely in response to a pollution crisis affecting many of its large urban areas.

Negotiators adopted a draft climate agreement Saturday that was cluttered with brackets and competing options, leaving ministers with the job of untangling key sticking points in what is envisioned to become a lasting, universal pact to fight global warming.

The decline of 0.6 percent projected for this year, should it come to pass, would be highly unusual at a time when the global economy is growing. The most likely scenario was a 0.6% decline.

A separate study in the December 7 Nature Climate Change, coauthored by Stanford researchers Rob Jackson and Jennifer Milne, assesses the potential opportunities and risks of negative-emissions technologies that remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

“The most promising finding in our report is the coupling of lower carbon emissions with a strong economic growth of more than 3 percent”, said Jackson, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Precourt Institute for Energy.

An undercover sting by Greenpeace has revealed that two prominent climate skeptics were available for hire by the hour to write reports casting doubt on the dangers posed by global warming.

Australia’s per capita emissions has been stable at high levels, however there has been a strong declining trend over the past six years.

Using preliminary data through October 2015, the global team of emission trackers project that worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide this year will be down by 200 million metric tons (220 million tons).

The researchers said emissions had previously grown strongly, with growth at around 2.4 per cent each year, for the past decade. But almost 60 percent of the increase in primary energy use in the last two years was met by renewable and nuclear power. We’re seeing a flattening or a decline in emissions at a time when the global economy is still growing robustly.

“Last year we saw signs that growth and emissions were uncoupling, and the new research suggests that’s set to continue and even accelerate”.

He said, “I think we will see emissions resuming in the very near future”.

“Even if emissions were to peak soon, global emissions would still take years to decline substantively”, said the authors.