Climate scientists hail 2023 as ‘beginning of the end’ for fossil fuel era

Fossil fuel emissions from gas, oil and coal plants will have peaked by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. Photograph: Alexisaj/Alamy

Global efforts to slow a runaway climate catastrophe may have reached a critical milestone in the last year with the peak of global carbon emissions from energy use, according to experts.

A growing number of climate analysts believe that 2023 may be recorded as the year in which annual emissions reached a pinnacle before the global fossil fuel economy begins a terminal decline.