Olivia Woods
The International Energy Agency (IEA) projected on Wednesday that carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion would increase again in 2022, by a considerably smaller margin than in 2021, due to the expansion of renewable energy and electric vehicles.
Carbon dioxide emissions, the primary greenhouse gas contributing to global warming, have rebounded strongly during the past year, following the global economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
According to the IEA, fossil fuel-related CO2 emissions are expected to increase by about 1% in 2022. A significant increase compared to the 33.5 billion tons of CO2 emitted in 2021 due to the combustion of gas, oil, and coal.
“This year’s increase is driven by power generation and by the aviation sector, as air travel rebounds from pandemic lows,” said the agency.
“The rise in global CO2 emissions this year would be much larger—more than tripling to reach close to 1 billion tonnes—were it not for the major deployments of renewable energy technologies and electric vehicles around the world.”
According to the 2015 Paris climate pact, emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases must drop dramatically over the coming decades to keep global temperatures from increasing by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).
World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank, released a report on Wednesday finding that countries’ current goals to cut emissions will result in only a 7% reduction by 2030 from 2019 levels. The group estimated that 43% reduction is needed to achieve the Paris target.
Original source material for this article taken from here
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