LONDON – According to the International Energy Agency, energy-related carbon emissions are expected to increase by nearly 5% this year, reversing most of the decline caused by the coronavirus pandemic last year.
In the IEA’s Global Energy Review 2021 published on Tuesday, the group said global energy-related CO2 emissions would rise to 33 billion tons this year, an increase of 1.5 billion tons from 2020.
This would reflect the largest increase in emissions since 2010 and the second largest increase in history.
“This is a terrible warning that the economic recovery from the Covid crisis is far from sustainable for our climate at the moment,” said Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the IEA, in the report.
“Unless governments around the world act quickly to start reducing emissions, we will likely face an even worse situation in 2022,” he added.
The report comes at a time when policymakers are under increasing pressure to deliver on the promises made under the Paris Agreement.
President Joe Biden will host a virtual summit this week to discuss the climate emergency with dozen of world leaders. Global talks are due to take place in Glasgow, Scotland in early November.
Yet even if politicians and business leaders publicly acknowledge the need to transition to a low-carbon society, hopes of containing global warming and achieving a critical global goal are rapidly waning.
Almost 200 countries ratified the Paris Climate Agreement at COP21 in 2015 and agreed to limit the rise in the planet’s average temperature to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to make efforts to reduce the temperature rise to 1, 5 degrees Celsius limit.
It remains a focus ahead of COP26, although some climate researchers now believe that reaching the 1.5 degrees Celsius target is already “practically impossible”.
“A Growing Void”
“During the Covid crisis, a lot of people thought people were much more environmentally conscious, governments are making promise after promise, and as a result we would have a cleaner energy system. But the numbers paint a completely different picture,” Birol told CNBC’s Street Signs Europe “.
“There is a growing gap between what governments say, what we read in the newspapers and so on, and what happens in real life.”
Birol said policymakers would have to make clear commitments at the heads of state and government climate summit on Thursday and Friday on how they intend to significantly reduce emissions.
He warned that while the IEA’s emissions forecast for 2021 was “disappointing”, the lack of immediate action would mean that the outlook for next year should be “even worse”.
The IEA said this year’s increase in carbon emissions will likely be due to a revival in coal consumption in the power sector, with more than 80% of forecast growth coming from Asia, led by China.
According to the IEA, coal consumption in the USA and the European Union is also expected to rise in 2021, but will remain “well below” the pre-crisis level.
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