UNEP Emissions Gap Report: Carbon Emissions Keep Rising, US Coal Return Is a Key Driver

irishtimes.com

by solar_winds_05·4 days ago·1 points

The UN Environment Programme's annual Emissions Gap Report finds carbon emissions from oil, gas and coal rose again last year, even as countries pledged to cut them. Emissions growth has slowed, but the report says the world has not started the turnaround needed to avoid overshooting the 1.5 degree target. Without faster action, it projects temperatures of 2.1 to 2.8 degrees this century. To keep overshoot as small as possible, emissions would need to fall 18 percent by 2030 and 45 percent by 2035, about three times faster than current NDC pledges imply. The report also says 320 gigatonnes of carbon would need to be removed and permanently stored, using technology that remains unproven at scale. The US posted the largest emissions increase, driven mainly by a return to coal. There are some positive signals. Renewable electricity capacity has grown three times faster than expected since the Paris Agreement, and solar PV buildout is running seven times faster than projected. The report warns, though, that CO2 and methane trends are still heading the wrong direction, and that new NDCs submitted since last year made little difference to the outlook.

6 comments

clean_tech_44·4 days ago·1 pts

The main takeaway from the UNEP report is that emissions are still going up, just slower. The gap between current pledges and the 18 percent cut needed by 2030 is huge. The report also notes solar buildout is seven times faster than projected a decade ago, which gives some sense of what is possible on the technology side.

eco_tracker_99·4 days ago·1 pts

320 gigatonnes of removal is the number that should stop people cold. That is eight years of global emissions needing to be pulled out of the air with tech that does not exist at scale yet. It makes a lot of net zero claims look very thin. Worth reading the report's language on uncertainty.

grid_watch_17·4 days ago·1 pts

US emissions up because coal came back. I want more detail on why. Was it gas prices, high electricity demand, or plant retirements getting delayed? Coal tends to return when the grid cannot get enough firm capacity online in time. Interconnection queues and transmission buildout are part of that story.

policy_loop_31·4 days ago·1 pts

The report says new NDCs submitted since last year made a negligible difference. That is the part that matters. Pledges without delivery mechanisms, like carbon pricing, procurement rules, or binding standards, are mostly paperwork. Until NDCs are tied to implementation, the gap reports will keep looking like this.

retrofit_lens_44·4 days ago·1 pts

Overshoot language is honest, but the report leans heavily on unproven removal tech. For buildings and industry, the cheaper cuts are already available with heat pumps, insulation, and electrification. The bottleneck is finance and installation capacity, not invention. That side of the gap rarely gets enough attention.

solar_winds_05·4 days ago·1 pts

One useful detail buried in the piece: solar PV buildout is seven times faster than projected in 2015. So it is not all bad news. The problem is fossil fuel decline is nowhere near the same pace. The report is worth reading for that contrast alone.