Global CO2 emissions to grow less than 1% this year thanks to renewables: IEA

GLOBAL carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are expected to rise by just under 1 per cent this year, as the expansion of renewables and electric vehicles (EVs) outweighed coal demand, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.

CO2 emissions are on course to increase by nearly 300 million tonnes to 33.8 billion tonnes this year, a far smaller rise than their jump of nearly 2 billion tonnes in 2021, the agency said in a report.

The rise this year has been driven by power generation and the aviation sector as air travel rebounds from pandemic lows.

While that increase could have been much larger at possibly 1 billion tonnes with countries’ coal demand surging as gas prices soared due to the war in Ukraine, deployment of renewable energy and EVs have kept a lid on that rise.

“The global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine 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,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol.

“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,” he added. REUTERS