IEA reports global CO2 emissions rising less quickly

• a month ago (2024-03-06)
• David Flin

Emissions 58 Hydropower 111 Renewables 752

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The International Energy Agency (IEA) has published a report, CO2 emissions in 2023 , that has found that global energy-related CO2 emissions rose less strongly in 2023 than the year before, even as total energy demand growth accelerated.

The report states that emissions increased by 410 million tonnes, or 1.1 per cent, in 2023, compared with a rise of 490 million tonnes in 2022. The total emissions in 2023 was a record 37.4 billion tonnes.

An exceptional shortfall in hydropower due to extreme droughts – in China, the USA, and several other economies – resulted in over 40 per cent of the rise in emissions in 2023 as countries turned largely to fossil fuel alternatives to plug the gap. Had it not been for the unusually low hydropower output, global CO2 emissions from electricity generation would have slightly declined last year.

Western economies saw a record fall in their CO2 emissions in 2023 even as their GDP grew. Their emissions dropped to a 50-year low while coal demand fell back to levels not seen since the early 1900s. The decline in advanced economies’ emissions was driven by a combination of strong renewables deployment, coal-to-gas switching, energy efficiency improvements, and softer industrial production. 2023 was the first year in which at least half of electricity generation in advanced economies came from low emissions sources like renewables and nuclear.

Fatih Birol, Executive Director at IEA, said: “The clean energy transition has undergone a series of stress tests in the last five years – and it has demonstrated its resilience. A pandemic, an energy crisis, and geopolitical instability all had the potential to derail efforts to build cleaner and more secure systems. Instead, we’ve seen the opposite in many economies.”