Trends in Global CO2 Emissions: 2013 Report

Abstract

The increase in global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) from fossil-fuel combustion and other smaller industrial sources – the main cause of human-induced global warming – slowed down in 2012, while the global average annual growth rate of 2.4 ppm in atmospheric CO2 concentrations in 2012 was rather high. Actual global emissions increased by 1.4% over 2011, reaching a total of 34.5 billion tonnes in 2012. After a correction for the leap year 2012, this increase was reduced to only 1.1%, compared with an average annual increase of 2.9% since 2000. The CO2 emission trend mainly reflects energy-related human activities which, over the past decade, were determined by economic growth, particularly in emerging countries. In 2012, a ‘decoupling’ of the increase in CO2 emissions from global economic growth (in GDP) took place, which points to a shift towards less fossil-fuel intensive activities, more use of renewable energy and increased energy saving. Comparing regional CO2 emission trends reveals large differences in underlying causes, which complicates the evaluation of the robustness of observed trends. For 2012, remarkable trends were seen in the top 3 emitting countries/regions, which accounted for 55% of total global CO2 emissions. Of these three, China (29% share) increased its CO2 emissions by 3%, which is low compared with annual increases of about 10% over the last decade. In the United States (16% share) and the European Union (11% share) CO2 emissions decreased by 4% and 1.6%, respectively. In addition, in India and Japan, emissions increased by 7% and 6%, and the Russian Federation noted a 1% decrease. Although China’s CO2 emissions per capita are comparable to those in the EU and almost half of US emissions per capita, its CO2 emissions per USD in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are almost double those of the EU and United States and similar to those of the Russian Federation. China’s large economic stimulus package, intended to avoid a decrease in annual economic growth during the recent global recession, has come to an end. With electricity and energy increases at half the pace of GDP growth, the energy intensity per unit of GDP declined in 2012 by 3.6%, which is twice as fast as in 2011. This slower and structurally changed growth puts the country back on track, in combination with a national energy consumption target for 2015, to meet its 2015 target according to the 12th Five Year Plan, with an almost 17% cumulative reduction in energy intensity per unit of GDP, compared to 2010. China also increased its hydropower capacity and output by 23% in 2012, which had a significant mitigating effect of about 1.5 percentage points on its CO2 emissions in 2012. In that year, China’s average carbon dioxide emissions of 7.1 tonnes CO2 per capita resulted from a smoothing of their CO2 increase by only 3% after the about 10% annual growth rates of the previous decade. This 2012 increase in fuel consumption was mainly driven by the increase in building construction and expansion of infrastructure, as indicated by the growth in cement and steel production. Although the United States, with 16.4 tonnes CO2 per capita in 2012, showed a decrease in CO2 emissions since 2005, they still ranks among the major industrialised countries with the highest emission levels. In 2012, with an economic growth of 2%, their CO2 emissions decreased by 4%, mainly because of a further fuel shift from coal to gas in the power sector, due to the low gas price. In recent years, the United States expanded shale gas fracturing and has now become the largest natural gas producer in the world. Over the past 5 years, the share of shale gas increased to one third of the total US gross gas production and the share of shale oil in 2012 was almost one quarter of total US crude oil production. The European Union, as a whole, experienced an economic recession in 2012 with the EU27’s GDP declining by 0.3%, compared to 2011, and actual CO2 emissions declining by 1.3%, which is less than the 2011 decrease of 3.1%. The main reasons for this are a decrease in primary energy consumption of oil and gas, by 4% and 2% respectively , a decrease in road freight transport by 4%, and a decrease of 2% in total emissions from power generation and manufacturing installations participating in the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). While the total CO2 emissions from power generation in EU27 decreased by 2.3% in 2012, very different trends were noticed for the different EU Member States, in particular for coal. The use of coal in Europe’s energy mix for electricity production became attractive again. In 2012, increased coal consumption was observed in the United Kingdom (+24%; the highest consumption since 2006), Spain (+24%; the second year with an increase after two years of decreasing consumption), Germany (+4%) and France (+20%), versus decreases in Poland and the Czech Republic of 4% and 8%, respectively.