Overview

Release of the Global Carbon Budget 2015: You can access data, figures, infographics, and press releases from http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget.

The link below, explains the relation between emissions and concentrations in the perspective of the global carbon budget 2015:

Global and detail national CO2 emissions data from fossil fuels can also be accessed from the Global Carbon Atlas with a number of custom made options to plot data http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org.

The 3 main related papers:

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nclimate2870.pdf

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nclimate2892.pdf

http://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/7/349/2015/essd-7-349-2015.pdf

Details on the 2015 Global Carbon Budget are also highlighted below (Source: Global Carbon Project).

Key results for the Global Carbon Budget 2015                

 7 December 2015, 5:01 pm Paris time

 CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels and industry grew +0.6% in 2014, and are projected to decline by –0.6% [–1.6% to +0.5%] in 2015. This marks a break with the rapid emissions growth of 2.4% per year of the previous decade (2004-2013), though it is unclear if this trend will continue in the future.

○        China’s decreased coal use largely accounts for the break in global emissions growth [see China section below], coupled with slower global growth in petroleum and faster growth in renewables.

○        The European Union is the region with the strongest decline in emissions, declining at an average of  2.4% per year in the past decade (2005-2014). Although the outsourcing of emissions to emerging economies played a substantive role in the earlier reductions, emissions transfers into the EU have declined since 2007. 

○        Emissions in the United States declined by 1.4% per year in the past decade (2005-2014), a decline that is projected to continue through 2015.

○        India’s emissions of 2.4 billion tonnes of CO₂ today match those of China in 1990, but per-capita emissions continue to be well below the global average at 2.0 tCO₂. India’s challenge, however, is the need to provide 1.3 billion people with greater access to energy. Many other emerging economies and lower-income countries are in a similar position.

○        The decline in emissions in the EU of 210 MtCO₂ in 2014 was the same size as the increase in emissions in India of 205 MtCO₂. If present trends persist, India’s emissions will match those of the EU within 2-3 years.

○        Global emissions from fossil fuels and industry were 35.9 GtCO₂ in 2014 and are expected to decrease to 35.7 GtCO₂ in 2015, with world-average emissions per person at 4.9 tCO₂ (see further statistics in Table 1 below).

○        Renewables may play an increasingly important role in helping to reduce fossil fuel emissions.  2014 broke global records in installed capacity for both wind (50 GW) and solar PV (40 GW) power (and both are reaching price parity with fossil fuels in many markets).

○        Emissions from deforestation and other land-use change were estimated at 4.0 GtCO₂ in 2014, with large uncertainty. [Note that work by ESSD co-author GR van der Werf based on burned areas detected by satellite shows enhanced land-use change emissions in 2015 due mainly to fires in Indonesia. Details available on http://www.globalfiredata.org/updates.html]. 

Could this be the peak in global emissions already?

○        Most likely not yet. With lower emissions growth since 2012, it looks like the trajectory of global emissions might have changed temporarily away from the 2-3% growth we have seen since 2000 at a time when world GDP has continued to grow above 3% per year.

○        Reduced growth in coal consumption in China is the main cause of the reduced growth in global emissions. The trajectory of global emissions in the next 5 years will depend on economic stability in China together with the implementation of air quality measures and climate policies.

○        Emissions are declining in many industrialised countries, but only very slowly. Across Annex B countries, emissions have decreased by 1.3 percent per year in the past decade (2005-2014).

○        Renewables are rising very rapidly, both in China and worldwide.

○        According to UNFCCC, the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) submitted to the UNFCCC before the Paris Conference of the Parties, imply a growth in global emissions by 2030 of 11-22% above 2010 (or 4-15% above 2015). This translates into a slower growth in global emissions of 0.3 to 1.0 % per year.

 Emissions in China

○        After rising 6.7% per year in the past decade, China’s emissions growth slowed to 1.2% in 2014 and is expected to decline in 2015 (by about 4%, with a large uncertainty range of -4.6% to -1.1%). This was caused by stable (in 2014) and decreased (in 2015) coal consumption.

○        Considerable uncertainty is associated with estimates of China’s national emissions.Our growth rates for years after 2011, including our projection for China for 2015, are based on recently revised data.

○         58% of the increase in China’s primary energy consumption from 2013–2014 came from non-fossil fuel sources (mainly hydro, but also nuclear and other renewables), compared with 24% for increased natural gas and 17% for oil.

 CO₂ partition among the atmosphere, ocean and land

○        The ocean sink removed 10.7 [8.9 to 12.6]  GtCO₂ while the land sink exhibited one of the largest sink of the past 60 years removing 15.0 [11.7 to 18.2] GtCO₂, comparable to the extraordinary sink in 2011 during La Nina episode. Consequently, the atmospheric CO₂ accumulation was below average.

○        Atmospheric CO₂ levels have reached 400 parts per million (ppm) in 2015, 44% above pre-industrial levels [data NOAA/ESRL]. This is the highest level in at least the last 800,000 years.

Cumulative Emissions

○        Cumulative emissions since year 1870 to 2015 are 2035 [1830 to 2240] GtCO₂ including emissions from fossil fuels, industry, and land use change

○        Global emissions need to decrease to near zero to stop the rise in atmospheric CO₂ and achieve climate stabilisation (at any level). This implies that there is a fixed cumulative carbon quota available to keep global average temperature below a desired stabilisation level.

○        The remaining carbon quota to stay under 2°C (66% probability) has shrunk to 865 [515 to 1115] GtCO₂, corresponding to about 15-30 years at current emissions level when accounting for the uncertainty (total cumulative budget as in IPCC Synthesis Report).

Negative Emission Technologies

○        Most climate stabilisation scenarios designed to stay below two degrees use new technologies that remove large quantities of carbon from the atmosphere. At present, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage is the main technology used in scenarios to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide removal implies that the fixed carbon quota required to stabilise climate at a given temperature level can be temporarily exceeded.

○        Our new analysis on the potential large scale deployment of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage show that there are biophysical and socioeconomic constraints that might limit the amount of negative emissions that can be deployed based on current generation of bioenergy systems.

○        At present growth rates of emissions and given the size of the remaining CO₂ emissions quota to avoid exceeding two degrees requires urgent  and widespread implementation of mitigation implying a rapid decoupling of GDP growth from CO₂ emission growth.

Access to Data and Forums

○        Data pertaining to the global carbon budget 2015 can be accessed from http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget and http://dx.doi.org/10.3334/CDIAC/GCP_2015

○        Global and national data on carbon emissions from fossil fuels and industry to year 2014 can also be obtained from the Global Carbon Atlas, an online interactive tool to explore, plot and download data http://globalcarbonatlas.org   

Table 1. 2014 fossil fuel emissions from top 20 countries including the EU (together and separate) in billion tonnes CO

Results presented were published on December 7, 17:01 Paris time, in the following journals:

Jackson, RB, JG Canadell, C Le Quéré, RM Andrew, JI Korsbakken, GP Peters, and N Nakicenovic (2015). Reaching peak emissions, Nature Climate Change, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2892

Le Quéré, C, R Moriarty, RM Andrew, JG Canadell, S Sitch, JI Korsbakken, P Friedlingstein, GP Peters, RJ Andres, TA Boden, RA Houghton, JI House, RF Keeling, P Tans, A Arneth, DCE Bakker, L Barbero, L Bopp, J Chang, F Chevallier, LP Chini, P Ciais, M Fader, R Feely, T Gkritzalis, I Harris, J Hauck, T Ilyina, AK Jain, E Kato, V Kitidis, K Klein Goldewijk, C Koven, P Landschützer, SK Lauvset, N Lefèvre, A Lenton, ID Lima, N Metzl, F Millero, DR Munro, A Murata, JEMS Nabel, S Nakaoka, Y Nojiri, K O'Brien, A Olsen, T Ono, FF Pérez, B Pfeil, D Pierrot, B Poulter, G Rehder, C Rödenbeck, S Saito, U Schuster, J Schwinger, R Séférian, T Steinhoff, BD Stocker, AJ Sutton, T Takahashi, B Tilbrook, IT van der Laan-Luijkx, GR van der Werf, S van Heuven, D Vandemark, N Viovy, A Wiltshire, S Zaehle, and N Zeng (2015) Global Carbon Budget 2015, Earth System Science Data, http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/essd-7-349-2015

Smith, P, SJ Davis, F Creutzig, S. Fuss, J Minx, B Gabrielle, E Kato, RB Jackson, A Cowie, E Kriegler, DP van Vuuren, J Rogelj, P Ciais, J Milne, JG Canadell, D McCollum, GP Peters, RM Andrew, V Krey, G Shrestha, P Friedlingstein, T Gasser, A Grübler, WK Heidug, M Jonas, CD Jones, F Kraxner, E Littleton, J Lowe, JR Moreira, N Nakicenovic, M Obersteiner, A Patwardhan, M Rogner, E Rubin, A Sharifi, A Torvanger, Y Yamagata, J Edmonds, and C Yongsung (2015). Biophysical and economic limits to negative CO₂ emissions. Nature Climate Change, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2892

 This media release is part of the Global Carbon Budget 2015 of the Global Carbon Project, based on three analyses published on 7 December 2015, 17:01 pm Central European Time (Paris).