In Historic Turn, CO2 Emissions Flatline in 2014, Even as Global Economy Grows
A key stumbling block in the effort to combat global warming has been the intimate link between greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth. When times are good and industries are thriving, global energy use traditionally increases and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions also go up. Only when economies stumble and businesses shutter — as during the most recent financial crisis — does energy use typically decline, in turn bringing down planet-warming emissions.
But for the first time in nearly half a century, that synchrony between economic growth and energy-related emissions seems to have been broken, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, prompting its chief economist to wonder if an important new pivot point has been reached — one that decouples economic vigor and carbon pollution.
The IEA pegged carbon dioxide emissions for 2014 at 32.3 billion metric tons — essentially the same volume as 2013, even as the global economy grew at a rate of about 3 percent.
“This gives me even more hope that humankind will be able to work together to combat climate change, the most important threat facing us today,” the IEA’s lead economist, Fatih Birol, said in a statement accompanying the findings.
Giant machines dig for brown coal at an open-cast mining facility near the city of Grevenbroich in western Germany. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)
Whether the disconnect is a mere fluke or a true harbinger of change is impossible to know. The IEA suggested that decreasing use of coal in China— and upticks in renewable electricity generation there using solar, wind and hydropower — could have contributed to the reversal. The agency also cited the ongoing deployment of energy-efficiency and renewable power policies in Europe, the U.S. and other developed economies as additional factors.
Speculation that fossil fuel use overall is fast approaching a peak has been percolating for some time. A recent study published in the journal Fuel and conducted by a team of resource geologists and environmental engineers in Australia and China suggested that global fossil fuel use would likely top out within the next 10 years, and decline precipitously thereafter.
They attributed much of this projection to decreased reliance on coal in China, which reported this week that overall greenhouse gas emissions for the country went down in 2014 — the first such decline in more than a decade.
Mindful of such trends, the peak fossil-fuel study suggested that the most dire scenarios contemplated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its most recent assessment of global warming science and economicsare unlikely to be realized, given changes in energy consumption patterns in various countries and the status of ultimately recoverable fossil fuel resources globally.
“In a business-as-usual situation, it is unlikely that fossil-fuel-depleted industrial economies in Europe and parts of Asia will strategically position themselves to be dependent on fossil fuel imports,” said Gary Ellem, a biophysicist and lecturer at the University of Newcastle and a co-author of the study. “Rather, as part of business-as-usual, they will seek to accelerate the development and installation alternative energy generation technologies to improve their energy and economic security. There is clear evidence of this already occurring in Europe and China especially.”
According to the IEA, global greenhouse gas emissions have stalled or fallen only three times in the 40 years since the agency began tracking them. All of these instances, which occurred in the early 1980′s, 1992, and again in 2009, accompanied periods of global economic stagnation.
“The latest data on emissions are indeed encouraging, but this is no time for complacency,” IEA’s executive director, Maria van der Hoeven,” said in announcing the emissions news, “and certainly not the time to use this positive news as an excuse to stall further action.”
The agency suggested the findings provided “much-needed momentum” for international climate negotiators, who will meet in Paris later this year in an attempt to hammer out a global climate agreement.
But for the first time in nearly half a century, that synchrony between economic growth and energy-related emissions seems to have been broken, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, prompting its chief economist to wonder if an important new pivot point has been reached — one that decouples economic vigor and carbon pollution.
The IEA pegged carbon dioxide emissions for 2014 at 32.3 billion metric tons — essentially the same volume as 2013, even as the global economy grew at a rate of about 3 percent.
“This gives me even more hope that humankind will be able to work together to combat climate change, the most important threat facing us today,” the IEA’s lead economist, Fatih Birol, said in a statement accompanying the findings.
Giant machines dig for brown coal at an open-cast mining facility near the city of Grevenbroich in western Germany. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)
Whether the disconnect is a mere fluke or a true harbinger of change is impossible to know. The IEA suggested that decreasing use of coal in China— and upticks in renewable electricity generation there using solar, wind and hydropower — could have contributed to the reversal. The agency also cited the ongoing deployment of energy-efficiency and renewable power policies in Europe, the U.S. and other developed economies as additional factors.
Speculation that fossil fuel use overall is fast approaching a peak has been percolating for some time. A recent study published in the journal Fuel and conducted by a team of resource geologists and environmental engineers in Australia and China suggested that global fossil fuel use would likely top out within the next 10 years, and decline precipitously thereafter.
They attributed much of this projection to decreased reliance on coal in China, which reported this week that overall greenhouse gas emissions for the country went down in 2014 — the first such decline in more than a decade.
Mindful of such trends, the peak fossil-fuel study suggested that the most dire scenarios contemplated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its most recent assessment of global warming science and economicsare unlikely to be realized, given changes in energy consumption patterns in various countries and the status of ultimately recoverable fossil fuel resources globally.
“In a business-as-usual situation, it is unlikely that fossil-fuel-depleted industrial economies in Europe and parts of Asia will strategically position themselves to be dependent on fossil fuel imports,” said Gary Ellem, a biophysicist and lecturer at the University of Newcastle and a co-author of the study. “Rather, as part of business-as-usual, they will seek to accelerate the development and installation alternative energy generation technologies to improve their energy and economic security. There is clear evidence of this already occurring in Europe and China especially.”
According to the IEA, global greenhouse gas emissions have stalled or fallen only three times in the 40 years since the agency began tracking them. All of these instances, which occurred in the early 1980′s, 1992, and again in 2009, accompanied periods of global economic stagnation.
“The latest data on emissions are indeed encouraging, but this is no time for complacency,” IEA’s executive director, Maria van der Hoeven,” said in announcing the emissions news, “and certainly not the time to use this positive news as an excuse to stall further action.”
The agency suggested the findings provided “much-needed momentum” for international climate negotiators, who will meet in Paris later this year in an attempt to hammer out a global climate agreement.
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