Carbon emissions reached a record high alongside growing use of fossil fuels last year, prompting a leading energy group to join the chorus of voices scrutinizing global climate efforts.
The Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy released on Monday showed solar and wind capacity expanding by a record 266 gigawatts, while emissions from energy use, industrial processes, flaring, and methane rose to a new high of more than 39 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Juliet Davenport, who leads the Energy Institute, lamented that the world had to “look hard for positive news on the energy transition in this new data.”
“Despite further strong growth in wind and solar in the power sector, overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again,” she added. “We are still heading in the opposite direction to that required by the Paris Agreement.”
Executives from KPMG and Kearney, both of which contributed to the report, similarly warned about falling behind key emissions objectives. Their data came alongside other reporting that raised questions about the world’s ability to accomplish the type of sweeping transition to clean energy that officials such as President Joe Biden often promote.
The report came roughly eight years after nearly 200 nations signed onto the Paris agreement, which has a goal of keeping temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. Democratic lawmakers use the Paris Agreement as the foundation of their “Green New Deal” framework. Biden has also cited the agreement while pushing multibillion-dollar investments intended to transform the American economy into one that’s more energy efficient.
But the years following the Paris Agreement have nevertheless seen several reports warning that various entities were underperforming. The United Nations, which organized the Paris conference, asserted in October that the world was “nowhere near” reaching its targets on climate and was instead headed toward temperatures rising by 2.5 degrees Celsius.
Similarly urgent warnings came from the United Nations in prior years. Just four years after Paris, the international entity warned that the world was headed toward global extinction and needed a fivefold increase in climate efforts to reach the Paris emissions target. The International Energy Agency also called for an accelerated energy transition at the end of last year while noting that the world was set to reach record coal consumption.
More recently, the Canadian and Welsh governments said their nations weren’t doing enough to attain their self-imposed goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The United Kingdom’s Climate Change Committee also released a report noting deficiencies, while its chair reportedly said the body was even less confident than last year in the nation’s ability to meet goals by 2030.
The story is similar for big businesses: another analysis from the NewClimate Institute said major corporations were falling behind in meeting their commitments. It’s also unclear how seriously governments take the United Nations as many missed the deadline last year to submit updated climate plans even after years of browbeating.
The World Economic Forum meanwhile attempted in a blog post this month to combat the idea that it’s “too late to halt the climate crisis,” which the organization said had “been gaining ground recently.”
“It is critical that we overcome this narrative that it is too late to save the planet, which both ignores the significant progress that’s been made to decarbonize our society and also hinders further action,” the article said. “We cannot afford to be paralysed by climate pessimism but must rather accelerate action at all levels of society: from our local communities to global corporations. Every fraction of a degree counts when it comes to global heating, and so does every action we take to reduce our climate impact.”
Dire rhetoric of a ticking “time bomb,” as the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres phrased it, has been used to justify massive economic overhauls that critics say is counterproductive for achieving financial and energy security.
Part of the United Nations and environmentalists’ climate agenda involves halting oil and gas exploration while increasing consumption of minerals which largely remain in the hands of China. While the Biden administration has attempted to boost domestic investment in alternative energy, it’s questionable whether the United States will be able to develop infrastructure quickly enough to compete with China’s resource advantage.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a Heritage Foundation economist who served in the Trump administration, has argued that the nation’s energy supply chain “cannot currently produce all the resources to handle the regulatory push to transition wholesale to renewable energy resources and electrification without substantial increases in prices.”
“That’s why America would be wise to use its own natural resources, including oil and natural gas, stay energy independent, and not cuddle up to China,” she added.
In criticizing Biden’s plans, she pointed to her organization’s study attempting to gauge the impact of massive emissions reductions through a carbon tax. The study used the Energy Information Administration’s own model and found that even if all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development economies eliminated their emissions, temperatures would only be mitigated by 0.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Meanwhile, the United States would shed 1.2 million jobs and see $7.7 trillion in lost economic output over eighteen years.
