Global emissions look set to rise in 2024, hitting new records, despite the staggering growth of renewable energy around the world.

The annual Global Carbon Budget has projected that emissions will rise by 0.8 per cent in 2024. It's a slower rate of growth than in previous years, but comes at a time when climate scientists say emissions should already be dropping.

Both gas and oil emissions have continued to rise, with a small increase in coal emissions.

Pep Canadell is the executive director of the Global Carbon Project and the chief research scientist at CSIRO. He says it's bitter news despite many positive changes.

"We are at a point where emissions should have already peaked and come down very quickly, so whether a big growth or small growth, it's a terrible growth full stop," he said.

While it's not the end of the year yet, the data has been released with projections until the end of 2024 to coincide with the annual COP29 climate conference that is underway in Azerbaijan.

It's important to point out that the report's range of projections dip to –0.3 per cent, so there is still the chance the final numbers could see the world's emissions go down slightly.

Dr Bill Hare, a climate scientist and leads the Climate Analytics thinktank, described the news as "grim".

He says the world has the technology to reduce emissions.

"It's really on the heads of governments who failed to act."

Gas and oil going up

Oil and gas emissions are responsible for 90 per cent of the growth in emissions in 2024, according to the report.

Oil has been driven by the continued rebound in international aviation since the COVID pandemic, and are projected to increase by 0.9 per cent in 2024.

Gas emissions are projected to increase by 2.4 per cent, which Climate Analytics' Bill Hare describes as "really frustrating and concerning."

"What's happening there is that gas is displacing renewable energy in places where renewables could be taken up [...]. So that's really fundamentally worrying," he said.

Over the past decade, gas has been replacing coal in the global energy system, but Dr Canadell says that renewables should be filling that role.

Dr Hare says it's not enough for governments to just focus on the uptake of renewables.

"Countries everywhere need to remove those fossil fuel subsidies and if necessary, [move] towards providing incentives for clean tech," he stated.

"We know governments can act and do things. There are countries where emissions are actually really reducing, not by accident, but because governments put in place comprehensive policy."

Australia's emissions are down overall, driven mostly by more wind and solar in the energy system, although Australia's transport emissions are still increasing.

Renewables and energy demand

The news is frustrating for climate analysts like Dr Hare who were optimistic that the astonishing growth in renewables, especially in China, would see the world move in the opposite direction.

"Many of us and had expected there to be a peak in emissions and we thought that fossil fuel emissions will at least be flat and going down this year. So it's very disappointing and very concerning," Dr Hare told the ABC from Azerbaijan.

Around the world, energy use is increasing. This means that renewables need to grow fast enough to replace this increase before they can start replacing fossil fuels, and drive emissions down.

That means the world needs to be building renewables at a much faster rate.

This is especially obvious in countries like India and Indonesia, which are using coal as a primary source of energy.

"We have a lot with countries around the world with large populations coming from a very low per-capita emission consumption moving to us slowly but surely towards a more larger middle class, which will consume more energy," Dr Canadell said.

This issue is playing out at this year's COP29 conference, where the focus is on getting countries who have already developed their economies with fossil fuels to help the global south to transition to cleaner energy sources.

The positive trends

While there's a lot of frustration with the increase in fossil fuel emissions, there are underlying structural changes that point to better news in the coming years.

In China, the world's biggest emitter, emissions have stalled and could be going down as it rolls out wind and solar energy and electric cars at a break-neck speed, according to Dr Canadell.

"There's this fundamental structural changes in China leading into a cleaner or a more efficient use of energy and ultimately a decline in the carbon intensity of their economy," Canadell said.

"If this thing could be sustained over the coming years, that would be probably the single biggest positive news that we have that we might be now getting very seriously close to a peak global CO2 emissions."

The Carbon Budget Report doesn't just look at emissions going into the atmosphere from human activity; it also looks at how much carbon is being sucked back down thanks to trees and the oceans.

Deforestation accounts for ten per cent of the emissions humans are adding to the atmosphere, although the report found it has declined in the past two decades.

And projects to plant trees and bring back vegetation, which then draw carbon out of the atmosphere, are also playing a role in the carbon system.

"We have about 5 per cent of all global fossil fuel emissions that are currently being offset by purposely revegetation programs around the world," Dr Canadell said.

As much as 60 per cent of this reforestation effort is coming from China, where the government has turned to industrial-scale tree planting projects to reduce dust storms.

"The reason of those programs had nothing to do with climate change and carbon sequestration. It all had to do with stopping the desertification, stopping dust storms moving into the major cities," he said.

Of concern, the impacts of climate change and hotter temperatures are catching up. More fires put more emissions into the atmosphere, dry seasons affect how much carbon a forest can inhale, and heatwaves mean more energy to power air conditioners.

These "positive feedbacks" are on the mind of climate scientists as emissions keep rising.

"We will continue to damage our natural CO2 sinks, and we'll get less help from nature," Dr Canadell said.

"We are already factoring in all these into our modelling as we look into the future. But to be honest, we would be pretentious to think that we know that well how nature is going to behave as we continue pressing into these bigger climate extremes that are coming in a warmer world."

For Dr Canadell, the highly-anticipated peak emissions moment might not be what the world expects.

"It would be hard to clearly identify that we're in a peak because I think it's going to be a bumpy road once we get there, we may still go a little down, and then up again, and down again."

Dr Hare says it's critical the world starts reducing emissions quickly.

"In this problem of climate change, the way in which you do things matter. We can't just afford to flatline emissions because that would just keep warming going.