Small, Surprising Dip In World’s Carbon Emissions Traced To China

“A flat and declining growth rate for a couple of years does not change the fact that we’re still adding 40 or so billion tons of Carbon dioxide to the atmosphere this year from fossil fuels and deforestation”, Robert Jackson, a Stanford scientist and one of the authors on the report, told GreenBiz.

Growth in global carbon dioxide emissions is expected to slow for a second consecutive year in 2015, in spite of economic growth, after typically rising by around 2 to 3 percent since the turn of the century, according to research published on Monday. Though how much less has recently been a subject of great controversy when news broke that China, also the world’s largest Carbon dioxide emitter, had been burning up to 17 percent more coal a year than its government had disclosed.

Normally, declines in greenhouse gas emissions are linked with periods of economic downturn, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s or the global financial crisis in 2008. Specifically, the researchers are predicting that not only might the growth of Carbon dioxide emissions slow or stall this year, but that there might even be a chance emissions growth would decline by 0.6% in 2015. While it is encouraging that the carbon emissions appear to have fallen, it will be several more years before this announcement is put into true perspective.

Instead, emissions growth may resume as the Chinese economy resumes faster growth and as India pursues a plan to double its burning of coal in power plants, part of a program to bring 300 million poor villagers onto the power grid.

The research team said their projection for 2015 fell within a range of statistical uncertainty, from a decline of 1.6 percent to a small rise of 0.5 percent.

“Both leaders emphasized their personal commitment to reach an ambitious climate change agreement and their interest in working together to drive success”, the White House said in a press release. “Stabilisation, or reduction, in China’s coal use might be sustainable since more than half of the growth in the country’s energy consumption came from non-fossil fuel energy sources in 2014 and 2015”, Dr Canadell said.

But many advocates worry that any accord that comes out of the Paris talks will still fall short of what is needed to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.

According to Le Quere, basic energy needs of developing economies still rely primarily on coal where these emissions will decrease modestly for industrial nations at best.

Those efforts are aimed at coal because “coal is the criminal for that and they are reducing lots of coal consumption in the urban areas where most of the industry is based”, he said. These included China, which emitted 9.7 billion tonnes, followed by the United States of America (5.6 billion), the European Union (3.4 billion) and India (2.6 billion).

“We have a mountain (of emissions) in front of us”, Le Quere said. She points out that emissions need to be cut to near zero to stave off the current trend of a warming climate.