Global emissions projected to stall in 2015, Canadians remain carbon hogs

This article was written by Nina Chestney from Reuters and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

It represents the first time a decrease was recorded during a period of strong economic growth. This time is different.

“Reaching zero emissions will require long-term commitments from countries attending the climate meeting in Paris this week and beyond”, Jackson concluded. The findings were reported in the journal Nature Climate Change by a group of worldwide researchers who tracked the emissions on a global level.

The study said that lower use of coalin China was a key reason for fall in in global Carbon dioxide emissions. For 2015, scientists estimate that carbon emissions would range between an increase of 0.5% to a decline of 1.6%. But almost 60 percent of the increase in primary energy use in the last two years was met by renewable and nuclear power. So you might think that if you gave plants more Carbon dioxide to work with, the way we’re doing by pumping emissions into the air, it would enhance plant growth – which, in turn, would enable plants to absorb more of the greenhouse gas.

Saudi negotiator Khalid Abuleif said scientists did not have ” robust information and the support of science to act practically and meet such criteria”.

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.

But will this shift last for more than a year or two? Such structural changes, if continued, could bring China’s peak emissions much earlier than anyone is anticipating and certainly well before 2030.

The report coincides with The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) launching the full version of the 2015 Emissions Gap Report, which found that the world was nearly halfway to the emissions cuts needed to limit global temperature rise to 2°C by the end of the century. But models used for such analysis were not that different from those that completely missed the very rapid rise of the Chinese economy in the decade of 2000 and perhaps now its rapid decarbonisation. In September, China announced a new cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Still, it reverses a relentless increase the world has experienced over the past few years.

Still, this decline in emissions is likely just a momentary reprieve. Pilot carbon trading programs in seven cities and provinces grant companies certain amounts of emissions, and companies can trade their given quota with each other via the financial mechanism.

As the world’s biggest carbon emitter, the changes China makes could have great influence over these global emissions rates. These trends are not stopping here. “Three years is far too short to see a disruptive technology”, he said.

“Our data provides a small glimmer of hope that the steady growth of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may be ending”, said Stanford researcher Robert B. Jackson, the project’s leader.

This article was originally published by The Conversation.