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Efforts to tackle climate change since last year’s COP26 climate talks are reducing emissions, but not fast enough for the world to meet its goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century.
Pledges made by nations will see emissions increase by 10.6 per cent by 2030 compared to 2010 levels, a United Nations report has found. This is an improvement over last year’s assessment, which found countries were on a path to increase emissions by 13.7 per cent by 2030, compared to 2010.
Natalie Zemko, 81, drinks tea by candlelight after power was restricted in Kyiv after Russian strikes damaged electricity plants.Credit:Getty
To stabilise warming at beneath 1.5 degrees, as agreed to in the Paris Accord, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believes emissions need to be cut 45 per cent by 2030 compared to 2010.
“The downward trend in emissions expected by 2030 shows that nations have made some progress this year,” said Simon Stiell, executive secretary of UN Climate Change. “But the science is clear and so are our climate goals under the Paris Agreement. We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a 1.5 degrees Celsius world. To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years.”
The new UN report is released as a second global body, the International Energy Agency, has found reductions in emissions from fossil fuel has been reduced because of sharp uptake in use of renewables and electric vehicles in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a spike in oil and gas prices caused by the war.
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The IEA analysis found emissions from fossil fuels are expected to rise less 1 per cent this year, a fraction of the increase caused last year by the rebound of the global economy after the first waves of the pandemic.
“The global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a scramble by many countries to use other energy sources to replace the natural gas supplies that Russia has withheld from the market,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol.
“The encouraging news is that solar and wind are filling much of the gap, with the uptick in coal appearing to be relatively small and temporary,” he said.