Global carbon dioxide emissions are “defying expectations” and set to rise by just under 1 percent this year, far less than analysts predicted, due to record deployment of renewable energy and electric vehicles, a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows.
The IEA estimates that global carbon dioxide emissions will increase by nearly 300 million tonnes this year to 33.8 billion tonnes.
This translates to a smaller rise than their jump of around two billion tonnes last year, the report suggests.
The Paris-based intergovernmental organisation attributes this year’s slow growth to the expansion of the global renewable energy capacity and the accelerated rollout of electric vehicles.
The report said solar photovoltaic and wind were leading an increase in global renewable electricity generation of more than 700 terawatt-hours (TWh), the largest annual rise on record this year.
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In a separate study, the E3G and Ember climate consultancies found that renewable energy growth has saved the EU $11 billion in gas imports since Vladimir Putin sent his troops across the Ukraine border in February, Bloomberg reports. Solar and wind supplied one-quarter of the continent’s electricity between March and September.
The invasion “has prompted a scramble by many countries to use other energy sources to replace the natural gas supplies that Russia has withheld from the market. The encouraging news is that solar and wind are filling much of the gap, with the uptick in coal appearing to be relatively small and temporary,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.
“This means that CO2 emissions are growing far less quickly this year than some people feared—and that policy actions by governments are driving real structural changes in the energy economy. Those changes are set to accelerate thanks to the major clean energy policy plans that have advanced around the world in recent months.”
Corporate Knights Research Director Ralph Torrie advised against trying to project where emissions will go next. For now, “the long-term trend and the momentum are in the right direction, just not yet accelerating at the pace we need,” he said in an email. And “most of the factors driving the system right now would have been considered extremely unlikely 10 or even five years ago.”
