At the World Climate Conference in Dubai, participants are literally talking face to face about global warming. While there is debate over the right path, there is widespread agreement that the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement can only be achieved through a drastic reduction in human greenhouse gas emissions.
Only if we do not emit more carbon dioxide and its equivalents in 2050 than we have committed can global warming be limited to 1.5 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era by the end of the century, is the impulse of 197 Signatory states to the United States Agreement. Nations.
Emissions expected to fall in two years
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently stated that the reduction should be 43 percent between 2019 and 2030. The “peak” should be reached within two years at the latest, in 2025, after which emissions should decline. But at the moment this is not the case, as the new figures show, on the contrary: this year, emissions from the production of oil, gas, coal and cement are expected to have increased again and reached a peak.
This sad record emerges from the Global Carbon Budget report, which will be published this Tuesday on the occasion of the World Climate Conference. More than 120 scientists were involved and the study was led by the University of Exeter in England.
Emissions only fell during the Corona period due to confinements and closures, when many factories stopped and mobility was also lower than usual. According to preliminary calculations, emissions in 2023 were around 36.8 billion tons (gigatons). This was 1.1% more than in 2022 and 1.4% more than the pre-pandemic reference year of 2019.
“We will exceed the 1.5 degree target”
“The impacts of climate change are evident all around us, while the reduction of carbon emissions from fossil fuels is painfully slow,” said Pierre Friedlingstein, research leader in Exeter, in a statement. The study was published on Tuesday in the journal “Earth System Science Data”.
The German Press Agency quoted Julia Pongratz of the University of Munich, one of the report’s lead authors, as saying: “It seems inevitable that we will exceed the 1.5-degree target.” Referring to the many natural disasters, she said: “The last few years have shown us dramatically how serious the consequences of climate change already are.”
With an increase of 1.5 percent, emissions from oil use increased more sharply in 2023 than those from coal and gas, at 1.1 and 0.5 percent. The Western world continues to be quite successful in mitigation. In the EU, fossil fuel emissions fell by 7.4% and in the United States by 3%.
The world has little time to go back
On the other hand, it increased by 4% in China and up to 8.2% in India. In the rest of the world there was a slight decrease of 0.4 percent. The report does not identify Germany separately. In 2022, emissions fell by 1.9% to 0.67 gigatons. Compared to the reference year 1990, this represented a decrease of almost 37 percent. The German contribution to global emissions is around 1.8%.
The report makes it clear how little time the world has left to turn things around. To achieve a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, a total of just 275 gigatons of CO2 must be released into the atmosphere starting next year.
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That would be about 7.5 years with 2023 emissions. If we accept a 2-degree temperature increase, the budget is 1,150 gigatons or about 30 years. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now 51% higher than before industrialization; In climate research, this is equated to the year 1850.
Unsustainable biomass is critical
The report takes into account not only fossil fuels, but also other sources of emissions. Overall, human-generated (anthropogenic) emissions increased only slightly by 0.5 percent to 40.9 gigatons in 2023. The unsustainable use of biomass is considered critical. This particularly affects forestry and land use, for example through cutting down trees without sufficient trees growing back.
Forestry and land use will release about 4 gigatons of CO2 in 2023. This was 0.7 gigatons less than the average for the years 2013 to 2022. Only about two-thirds of the emissions caused by deforestation were offset by reforestation, the authors write. According to the information, the biggest emitters from forestry and soil use were Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa). These three countries were responsible for more than half of the production.
For the first time, the study also addresses technical options to reduce CO2. So far, however, these have not been able to offset even one millionth of the emissions, it was said. However, methods for removing carbon dioxide from the air are becoming increasingly important, as not all emission fields can be electrified with green electricity or decarbonized in some other way.