Far from being reduced, CO2 emissions from burning oil, gas and coal reach a new maximum

Despite the urgent need to cut CO2 emissions to tackle climate change, there is still no sign that they have peaked: emissions continue to climb in 2024, according to scientists from the Carbon Budget Project. The burning of oil, gas and coal – fossil fuels – is behind this increase.

In fact, greenhouse gas emissions caused by these fossils reach their record this year: 37.4 gigatonnes or 0.8% more than in 2023. This means that, although there are other smaller sources of CO2 that are contained ( such as those that come from changes in land uses), the total volume pumped into the atmosphere this year will grow. Exactly the opposite of what science indicates needs to be done to combat climate change: plummet emissions.

The data comes as delegations from almost 200 countries meet in Baku (Azerbaijan) for the COP29 Climate Summit. A summit convened for the third consecutive time in a consecutive petrostate and in a country whose president, Ilham Aliyev, said at the inauguration that “oil and gas are gifts from God.”

Already in 2009, the world admitted when signing the Copenhagen Agreement that “deep cuts” in gas emissions were needed to be able to “limit the increase in global temperature to below 2 °C.” In reality, that is the heart of the fight against climate change.

In 2019, an assessment by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) found that, when it came to reducing emissions, the years that had passed could be described as a “lost decade.” And it calculated that these emissions had to be reduced by 50% over the next 10 years to comply with the Paris Agreement. The opposite is happening.

Since 2019, only the covid 19 crisis has caused the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere to drop in 2020. After that, global emissions have risen year after year to exceed previous maximum peaks, as reflected in the Carbon analysis Budget Project. The growth in emissions from oil, gas and even coal has marked this upward line.

The researcher at the Exeter Global Systems Institute, Pierre Friedlingstein, adds that “there is no sign that the peak in the use of fossil fuels is being reached, while the impacts of climate change become increasingly dramatic.” And he warns that “time is running out.”

In this sense, the chief researcher of the Australian CSIRO, Pep Canadell, calculates that “we have six years of emissions left at this level to eat up the carbon budget that would allow us to keep the extra warming of the planet at 1.5 °C”, according to what he said. at a meeting of journalists at the Science Media Center (SMC).

This means that, according to scientific calculations, at this rate of emissions, in just six more years from today the maximum volume of gases that humanity could afford will have been injected into the atmosphere if it wanted to limit the increase in temperature. global warming of the planet at 1.5ºC at the end of the century. Because this is how climate inertia works once CO2 is added to the atmosphere and because this warming limit allows us to avoid the most harmful effects of climate change.

Natural sinks, essential

In absolute terms, if the European Union and the United States have reduced their emissions, India and, to a lesser extent, China have increased. The two Asian powers have used more coal than a year ago. In addition, international aviation has influenced the increase in oil-based emissions and analysts see that “it will continue to grow.”

Another aspect that this work addresses – which has involved 119 researchers from 86 institutions and 19 countries – is that of natural carbon sinks. Forests, soil and oceans get swallow up to half of the CO2 caused by the current model of human production and consumption. A capacity that, as global temperatures continue to rise, may decrease. A problem to balance the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and achieve the goal of climate neutrality in the world by 2050. That is, as much CO2 is absorbed as it is emitted.

“We cannot replace with technology the capacity to absorb CO2 from natural sinks. By no means. We cannot industrially build infrastructure to retain even 20% or 10% of the emissions and natural sinks eat up to 50%,” warns Canadell.