Global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rose less strongly in 2023 than the year before even as total energy demand growth accelerated, as indicated by new analysis from the International Energy Agency. But the continued expansion of solar PV, wind, nuclear power and electric cars has helped the world avoid greater use of fossil fuels.
Without clean energy technologies, the global increase in CO2 emissions in the last five years would have been three times larger.
Emissions increased by 410 million tonnes, or 1.1%, in 2023 – compared with a rise of 490 million tonnes the year before – taking them to a record level of 37.4 billion tonnes. An exceptional shortfall in hydropower owing to extreme droughts – in China, the United States and several other economies – resulted in over 40% of the rise in emissions in 2023 as countries turned largely to fossil fuel alternatives to plug the gap.
Had it not been for the unusually low hydropower output, global CO2 emissions from electricity generation would have declined last year, making the overall rise in energy-related emissions significantly smaller.
These findings come from the IEA’s annual review of global energy-related CO2 emissions – and the inaugural edition of a new series, the Clean Energy Market Monitor, which provides tracking of clean energy deployment for a select group of technologies and outlines the implications for global energy markets more broadly.
From 2019 to 2023, growth in clean energy was twice the growth of fossil fuels, providing the opportunity to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels this decade. For example, the deployment of wind and solar PV in electricity systems worldwide since 2019 has been sufficient to avoid an amount of annual coal consumption equivalent to that of India and Indonesia’s electricity sectors combined – and to dent annual natural gas demand by an amount equivalent to Russia’s pre-war natural gas exports to the European Union.
More complete information is available from IEA publications the ‘CO2 Emissions Report’ and the ‘Clean Energy Market Monitor’.
Linkedin
