Greenhouse Gas Emissions Soar

With delegates assembling in Durban, South Africa, to make progress on climate change, two new reports dramatized the lack of progress to date. The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia (UEA) co-released a study with the Global Carbon project indicating that global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased by 49 per cent in the last two decades. The study, which was published in the journal Nature Climate Change, showed that fossil fuel emissions increased by 5.9 per cent in 2010 and by 49 per cent since 1990 – the reference year for the Kyoto protocol.

The International Energy Agency, in releasing its annual World Energy Outlook, warned that without ‘a bold change of policy direction,” the world will lock itself into “an insecure, inefficient and high-carbon energy system.” The report indicated that four-fifths of the total energy-related CO2 emissions permitted to 2035 in the IEA’s “450 Scenario” are already locked-in by the existing capital stock of power stations, buildings and factories. Without further action by 2017, “the energy-related infrastructure then in place would generate all the CO2 emissions allowed in the 450 Scenario up to 2035.”