Fossil Emissions To Hit Record This year, India’s Share To Rise: Report

India’s fossil fuel emissions will increase by 4.6% in 2024, while China may see a marginal increase of 0.2%, new research by an international group of scientists has indicated.

The report, published at the UN climate conference or COP29 in Azerbaijan’s Baku on Wednesday, said global carbon emissions from fossil fuels could rise by 0.8 per cent to 37.4 billion tonnes from levels seen in 2023.

Earth could see the warmest year yet, 2024, as atmospheric CO2 is projected to reach 422.5 parts per million, rising 2.8 parts per million higher than last year in 2023 and 52% above pre-industrial levels.

“The impacts of climate change are now becoming ever more dramatic, but we still find no evidence that burning of fossil fuels has peaked,” Professor Pierre Friedlingstein of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, who led the study, said.

“India’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 rose by 6.1%, a significant increase accounting for 8 per cent of global emissions”, reads a report released last month by the United Nations.

However, at a third of this global share, the country’s share of the historical contribution to world CO2 emissions stands at only 3 per cent.

The per capita emission for India is also very low at 2.9 tons of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) with a far distance from the global average of 6.6 tCO2e.

China is expected to increase its emissions, making up 32 per cent of global totals, although these are likely to rise only by a low 0.2 per cent-the first time an increase has been predicted, although they may fall according to projections presented in the report issued today by the Global Carbon Project as part of COP29 talks.

Emissions from the United States and the European Union, which make up 13 percent and 7 percent of the total, respectively, are expected to decline as well-well-scheduled to decline by 0.6 percent for the US and 3.8 percent for the EU.

For India’s fossil fuel emissions, worth 8 percent of the global total, the team predicted a 4.6 percent jump.

This sets the rest of the world, accounting for 38 per cent of global emissions, to increase by 1.1 per cent, based on a report titled ‘Global Carbon Budget 2024’.

The researchers have said that in 2024, coal emissions are likely to grow by 0.2 per cent, oil by 0.9 per cent, and gas by 2.4 percent globally.

The coal, oil, and gas industries respectively accounted for 41%, 32% and 21% of global fossil CO2 emissions. However, with the uncertainty in the projections, it is still within the realm of possibility that coal emissions decline in 2024, they said.

Another important aspect emphasized by the report is that emissions from international aviation and shipping, respectively 3 percent of global emissions and accounted separately from national or regional totals, are projected to increase by 7.8 per cent in 2024, yet these emissions will still be at 3.5 percent below the pre-pandemic level in 2019.

Globally, emissions from land-use changes such as deforestation have declined by 20 per cent over the last decade but are expected to rebound in 2024. Permanent CO2 removal through reforestation and new forest planting now balances roughly half of the emissions from permanent deforestation, they pointed out.

Technology-based CO2 removal represents a mere miniscule fraction — one-millionth — of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.

Emissions from fires in 2024 remained well above average since the beginning of the satellite record in 2003, largely due to extreme 2023 wildfire season in Canada, which persisted into this year, along with severe drought in Brazil.
Land and ocean carbon sinks continue to take up about half of all released carbon emissions despite suffering at least partial adverse impacts from climate change.

Despite yet another annual increase in global emissions, new data provides evidence of collective climate action taken throughout much of the world. Renewables and electric cars have displaced fossil fuels in greater proportions while a confirmed first for deforestation emissions over past decades shows a downward trend,” says Professor Corinne Le Qur of the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia and Royal Society Research Professor.
As Dr Glen Peters in Oslo at CICERO Center for International Climate Research says, there are many signs of positive progress at country level, and it feels like maybe the world is now close to a global peak in fossil CO2 emissions – but elusive so far.

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