Madrid (AFP)
Fossil CO2 emissions are on the rise: they continued to grow in 2019 despite the decline in the use of coal, offset by the use of oil and especially natural gas, a new warning issued Wednesday on the sidelines. the COP25 in Madrid.
At a time when the states, gathered for the 25th UN climate conference, are urged to act more strongly and more quickly to reduce global warming, CO2 emissions are not making headway.
According to the annual report of the Global Carbon Project (GCP), these emissions are expected to increase by 0.6% in 2019, resulting in "an increase in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere" that contribute to climate disruption.
"Current policies are clearly not enough to reverse global emissions trends," warned climate scientist Corinne Le Quéré at a press briefing. "The urgency to act has not fallen yet."
At the current rate, the temperature could rise to 4 or 5 ° C by the end of the century, when the 2015 Paris agreement plans to limit global warming to well below 2 ° C, or even at 1.5 ° C.
To avoid exceeding this ambitious goal of + 1.5 ° C, greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced by 7.6% per year, every year from next year until 2030, calculated United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
For CO2 alone, however, a peak in emissions is not in sight. "I hope so in the next five years, but we do not see it yet," acknowledged Pierre Friedlingstein, University of Exeter.
Global fossil CO2 emissions (fossil fuels, industry and cement) are almost two-thirds higher in 2019 than in 1990. They have seen their growth slow since 2010, after the 2008 economic crisis, but they rose sharply in 2017 (+ 1.5%) and 2018 (+ 2.1%).
- Natural gas, false solution? -
In 2019, "the lower growth (of CO2 emissions) is due to various factors, including a slowdown in economic growth, weather conditions and a substantial decline in the use of coal in the United States and Europe", detailed Corinne Le Quéré.
The use of coal by the United States, the world's second largest emitter, and in the European Union has decreased, up to 10% for each in 2019, according to a press release from the GCP.
However, coal remains a popular energy source in China and the GCP sees no clear signals that China, the world's largest emitter, is ready to do without it.
Elsewhere, the decline in coal has been offset by greater use of oil and especially natural gas.
"For the same amount of energy that can be extracted, natural gas emits less CO2 than coal", but if its use increases, "it still increases CO2 emissions," said Philippe Ciais, researcher at LSCE-Institut Pierre Simon Laplace. "We can not continue to burn natural gas until the end of the century, otherwise we will not respect the Paris agreement," he said.
The International Energy Agency (IEA), however, defends natural gas as a transitional energy and expects a rise in its consumption of 10% until the end of the 2020s.
In India, the increase in CO2 emissions seems to have been slowed by weak economic growth.
Another source of CO2 emissions is land-use change, that is when forests, carbon sinks, are razed to give way, for example, to agricultural crops. But these emissions, more difficult to measure, are "very uncertain, with no clear trend over the last decade," according to the GCP.
In France, where nuclear power accounts for around 70% of electricity production, CO2 emissions decreased by 2.5% in 2018 (the last available figure) compared to 2017.
© 2019 AFP