Gas, renewables flatten global CO2 emissions
Gas and renewable energy resources have been turning the planet into a better place to live in, with them dominantly flattening overall carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions globally for the third straight year despite brisk economic growths in some countries which manifestly require larger scale energy consumption.
That has been the outcome of a study released this month by the International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based global think tank for the energy sector.
“Global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions were flat for a third straight year in 2016 even as the global economy grew,” the IEA has noted.
It expounded that “this was the result of growing renewable power generation, switches from coal to natural gas, improvements in energy efficiency as well as structural changes in the global economy.”
According to the IEA, global emissions from the energy sector hovered at 32.1 gigatons last year, which had been roughly the same in the past two years.
The IEA nevertheless cautioned that “while the pause in emissions growth is positive news to improve air pollution, it is not enough to put the world on a path to keep global temperatures from rising above 2°C.”
CO2 emissions decline were particularly noted in the world’s gigantic economies of United States and China, apparently the two biggest energy users and emitters also. Europe’s CO2 emissions had similarly been marked “stable,” and all three so far offset the increases in most of the rest of the world.
