Fossil Fuel Emissions Climb For Second Year, Research Shows

PALO ALTO, CA -- Global fossil fuel emissions are on track to rise for a second year in a row, primarily due to growing energy use, according to new estimates from the Global Carbon Project, an initiative led by Stanford University scientist Rob Jackson.

The new projections come in a week when international negotiators are gathering in the coal-mining city of Katowice, Poland, to work out the rules for implementing the Paris climate agreement, the Stanford News Service reported. Under the 2015 accord, hundreds of nations pledged to cut carbon emissions and keep global warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, which are above pre-industrial temperatures.

“We thought, perhaps hoped, emissions had peaked a few years ago,” said Jackson, a professor of Earth system science in Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences called Stanford Earth. “After two years of renewed growth, that was wishful thinking.”

The Global Carbon Project’s report, titled “Global Energy Growth Is Outpacing Decarbonization,” appears Dec. 5 in the peer-reviewed Environmental Research Letters, with more detailed data published simultaneously in Earth System Science Data, the news service adds. The group estimates global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel sources – which represent roughly 90 percent of all emissions from human activities – will reach a record high of just over 37 billion tons in 2018. This is an increase of 2.7 percent over emissions output in 2017.

Emissions from non-fossil sources, such as deforestation, are projected to add nearly 4.5 billion tons of carbon emissions to the 2018 total.

“Global energy demand is outpacing powerful growth in renewables and energy efficiency,” said Jackson, who is also a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and Precourt Institute for Energy. “The clock is ticking in our struggle to keep warming below 2 degrees.”

In the United States, emissions of carbon dioxide are projected to increase 2.5 percent in 2018 after a decade of declines. Culprits for the increase include unusual weather – a cold winter in Eastern states and a warm summer across much of the nation -- ramped up energy needs for seasonal heating and cooling. The trend has exacerbated a growing appetite for oil in the face of low gas prices.

“We’re driving more miles in bigger cars, changes that are outpacing improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency,” Jackson explained.

In 2019, barring a global economic downturn, the researchers anticipate carbon dioxide emissions will rise further despite urgency to reverse course. According to Jackson: “We need emissions to stabilize and quickly trend toward the zero line.”

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