Policy & Planning

Global emissions to surge past pre-Covid, as world fails to grasp ‘green recovery’

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Global greenhouse gas emissions are likely to have bounced back to near pre-Covid levels in 2021 and are expected to surge to new highs in 2022, defying global efforts to cut emissions, new analysis has shown.

The new report from the Canberra-based Global Carbon Project, estimated that global greenhouse gas emissions grew by around 4.9 per cent in 2021, after falling by 5.4 per cent in 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite calls for a ‘green recovery’ to the pandemic and for government stimulus measures to be directed to ways to ensure the economic recovery would not see emissions grow – it appears that the world has largely returned to old practices.

The analysis suggests that, overall, the world has failed to grasp the opportunity for a green economic recovery to the Covid-19 pandemic, and emissions will surge to new highs in 2022.

“It will take some time to see the full effect of the Covid-related disruptions on global CO2 emissions.” report contributor professor Corinne Le Quéré from the University of East Anglia said.

“A lot of progress has been made in decarbonising global energy since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, plus renewables is the only energy source that continued to grow during the pandemic.”

“New investments and strong climate policy now need to support the green economy much more systematically and push fossil fuels out of the equation.”

According to the report, the consumption of coal and gas is projected to grow more in 2021 than it fell in 2020, while the consumption of oil remains subdued due to lower transport activity.

As a result, the global carbon budget has been further diminished, with just 11 years of emissions at current levels likely to be enough to take the world past 1.5 degrees of warming, while emissions at current levels for a further 32 years would take the global warming beyond 2 degrees.

While emissions have largely continued to trend downwards in developed economies, including the United States and the European Union, this has been counterbalanced by surging emissions in emerging economies like China and India, where economic growth is still mainly being fuelled by fossil fuels.

The sudden recovery in greenhouse emissions is at least in part due to the efforts of governments to kick-start their economies through stimulus and could lead to the overall growth in global greenhouse gas emissions due to a surge in economic activity, the report suggests.

“Everyone is really trying to catch up very fast, and in this case, China has done full catch up. India’s very close to catching up on 2019. And the rest are coming very, very quickly,” the CSIRO’s Pep Canadell, who serves as executive director Global Carbon Project, said.

“This year, India has seen the strongest growth that we’ve seen from all countries. The big story, no doubt, has been coal. We’ve seen a 5.7 per cent increase in coal.”

Australia’s emissions fell by an estimated 5 per cent in 2020, driven by significant reductions in transport emissions as the Covid-19 pandemic restricted travel and ongoing reductions electricity emissions as uptake of wind and solar continues to grow.

While Australia’s transport emissions are expected to bounce back in 2021 and further again in 2022 as travel returns to normal levels, Australia is likely to maintain its overall downward trend in overall emissions – albeit at a slow pace.

The recently updated emissions productions, published by the federal government, show Australia’s transport emissions are expected to remain depressed until at least 2023 when they return to pre-Covid levels.

Ongoing strong investment in transitioning the electricity system away from coal and towards low emissions solar, wind and storage technologies will likely drive further emissions decreases – but emissions across remaining sectors are likely to remain little changed without comprehensive government policies.

The report underpins the need for countries to set more ambitious medium and long term emissions reduction targets and meaningful policies necessary to achieve the targets as countries undertake the next round of climate talks in Glasgow.

“Reaching net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 entails cutting global CO2 emissions by about 1.4 billion tonnes each year on average,” the Global Systems Institute’s professor Pierre Friedlingstein said, who led the analysis.

“Emissions fell by 1.9 billion tonnes in 2020 – so, to achieve net zero by 2050, we must cut emissions every year by an amount comparable to that seen during Covid.”

“This highlights the scale of the action that is now required, and hence the importance of the COP26 discussions,” Friedlingstein added.

Michael Mazengarb is a Sydney-based reporter with RenewEconomy, writing on climate change, clean energy, electric vehicles and politics. Before joining RenewEconomy, Michael worked in climate and energy policy for more than a decade.
Michael Mazengarb

Michael Mazengarb is a Sydney-based reporter with RenewEconomy, writing on climate change, clean energy, electric vehicles and politics. Before joining RenewEconomy, Michael worked in climate and energy policy for more than a decade.

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