Global greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise this year, putting the world on track for long-term warming approaching 4 degrees Celsius, far above the 2-degree target, analysts at British bank HSBC said in a new report.

"The year ahead will be dominated by growing tension between ever-stronger evidence of climate change and the inadequate policy response," said Nick Robins, head of the climate change center at London-based HSBC, one of the world's largest banking and financial services organizations.

Governments will need to begin serious negotiations this year if they are to deliver a global climate agreement in 2015, he said, while 2013 will be another year with above-average global temperatures.

"Drought in the USA in 2012 highlighted the vulnerability of commodity prices to turbocharged weather risk," Robins said. "Awareness of the severity of climate impacts will be confirmed in September when the IPCC publishes its fifth review of the science of climate change."

Global carbon reduction efforts will see scant progress this year, mainly from new trading systems in California and China, as well as efforts to rebalance the European Union's Emissions Trading System (ETS) by removing some pollution allowances from auctioning, Robins said.

The European Union is expected to take the first step toward shoring up the ETS at a European Parliament vote in March, while a Green Paper on the bloc's 2030 climate and energy targets is expected during the first quarter. The United Kingdom's carbon floor price of €20 ($26) per metric ton will take effect in April.

China and U.S. could take larger roles

Meanwhile, China will continue to increase its weight in the global climate equation.

"China is not just the world's largest emitter of carbon," Robins said. "In 2013 it will become the largest market for solar photovoltaic. It has long been the largest manufacturer. We also believe its Five Year Plan policies will start to temper the upward trend in coal use."

After new solar installations plateau and wind experiences a sharp decline this year, the latter due to the last-minute renewal of the production tax credit in the United States, these industries should see a short period of companies merging with one another or failing altogether before volumes rebound in 2014, Robins said.

President Obama's re-election means the threat of a rollback of climate and environmental policy has been removed, the report said. But how much the administration will move forward on these issues is still an open question. The introduction of a carbon tax remains a possibility, the report said.

A bright spot for 2012 was Brazil's 27 percent decline in the deforestation of the Amazon compared with 2011, which puts the country already today on the brink of meeting its target of cutting deforestation by 80 percent over 2005 levels by 2020, according to the report.

Other climate policy developments worth watching this year will take place in Australia, Denmark and Japan, HSBC said. In Australia, elections are due this year, and the opposition, which currently leads in the polls, has pledged to remove the country's carbon tax. Denmark will announce its own 2030 climate and energy targets in the first quarter, independent of the European Union's. And Japan will produce a new master plan for energy policy by this summer, including a review of its target to cut greenhouse gases by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.