Global carbon emissions may have peaked in 2023 – the hottest year in history – as efforts to step up renewable energy and step back from fossil fuels show signs of promise.
Climate experts are increasingly hopeful that 2024 could mark the beginning of a fall in emissions produced by the energy sector – a milestone the International Energy Agency (IEA) had earlier predicated would be met by the middle of this decade.
The energy sector is to blame for about three-quarters of global greenhouse emissions, and an overall emissions peak is needed in order for the world to achieve net zero by 2050.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the net zero emissions target is the only way to cap temperature rises at 1.5°Celsius and avoid the most disastrous consequences of the climate crisis.
Richer countries, however, would be expected to reach net zero much earlier.
Question of ‘how soon’
In its World Energy Outlook 2023, the IEA pointed to a peak in energy-related emissions “by 2025” partly as a result of the energy crisis brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“It’s not a question of ‘if’; it’s just a matter of ‘how soon’ – and the sooner the better for all of us,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol.
Analysis of the IEA’s own data by the Carbon Brief climate policy website found that peak would happen two years sooner – in 2023.
It also found that coal, oil and gas use would peak before 2030 thanks to the “unstoppable” growth of low-carbon technologies.
Chinese renewables
Efforts by China, the world's biggest carbon emitter, to drive growth in low-carbon technologies has also helped fuel the decline of the fossil fuel economy.
A poll published last month by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a thinktank based in Helsinki, showed China’s own emissions were on course to peak before 2030.
This was despite the country’s approval of dozens of new coal-fired power stations to meet rising energy needs.
China was among 118 signatories of a global plan to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 that was agreed in December at the UN’s Cop28 climate talks in Dubai.
CREA's lead analyst Lauri Myllyvirta said that with renewables capable of meeting new energy demands, China's emissions would likely go into a "structural decline" from 2024.
Hottest year
In July 2023, global temperatures shot up to their highest point ever recorded, with sea surface temperatures also warming the oceans to 0.51°C above the 1991-2020 average.
Samantha Burgess, deputy director at the European Commission's Copernicus Climate Change Service, said the earth had “not been this warm for the last 120,000 years”.
Meanwhile the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) described 2023 as "a deafening cacophony of broken records".
With greenhouse gases and global temperatures at a record high, the WMO warned that extreme weather has been leaving “a trail of devastation and despair” as it called for urgent global action.
