Global carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 5.8% in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic slowed economic activity, but they rebounded at the end of the year and are on course to rise further, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Major economies led a rebound in December when emissions were 2%, or 60 million tonnes, higher than in December 2019, as a pick-up in economic activity increased energy demand.<\/p>\n
China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, was the only country that experienced an increase in emissions last year of 0.8%, or 75 million tonnes, from 2019 levels, the IEA said in a report.<\/p>\n
In India, the world’s third biggest emitter, emissions rose above 2019 levels from last September as economic activity increased and restrictions were relaxed.<\/p>\n
“The rebound in global carbon emissions toward the end of last year is a stark warning that not enough is being done to accelerate clean energy transitions worldwide,” Fatih Birol, IEA executive director, said.<\/p>\n
“If current expectations for a global economic rebound this year are confirmed, and in the absence of major policy changes in the world’s largest economies, global emissions are likely to increase in 2021,” he added.<\/p>\n
Primary energy demand fell 4% in 2020 as lockdowns and other restrictions limited industrial activity and transport.<\/p>\n
This prompted an unprecedented decline of almost 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide – the equivalent of removing all the European Union’s emissions from the global total, the IEA said.<\/p>\n
In the global power sector last year, emissions fell by 3.3%, the largest absolute fall on record. Although energy demand decreased, the growth of renewables generation was the biggest contributor to the fall.<\/p>\n
The share of renewables in power generation rose to 29% last year from 27% in 2019. Emissions from transport fell by 14% last year from 2019 levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Global carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 5.8% in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic slowed economic activity, but they rebounded at the end of the year and are on course to rise further, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday. Major economies led a rebound in December when emissions were 2%, or 60 million tonnes, higher than in December 2019, as a pick-up in economic activity increased energy demand. China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, was the only country that experienced an increase in emissions last year of 0.8%, or 75 million tonnes, from 2019 levels, the IEA said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-402747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}