The world is on track to set a new record for greenhouse gas emissions just in time for the 10th anniversary of the Paris climate accord.
Climate pollution from fossil fuels are on pace to exceed 38 billion metric tons this year, the Global Carbon Project said Thursday. The report, which comes as nations gather in Brazil for the COP30 climate summit, underscores just how difficult it will be for countries to cut emissions to the levels agreed to in 2015.
The Paris Agreement’s most ambitious climate target envisioned limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But the world has virtually extinguished the carbon budget needed to meet that target, the Global Carbon Project found.
“Keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees C is no longer plausible” said Pierre Friedlingstein, a climate researcher at the University of Exeter who led the study.
The Global Carbon Project’s annual study is produced by a team of 130 scientists from across the world. This year’s report landed on the heels of the International Energy Agency’s annual outlook, which came to a similar conclusion about the world’s climate trajectory.
It concluded that exceeding 1.5 C is “inevitable” and revived a previously discontinued scenario in which fossil fuel consumption would increase through 2050, rather than peak in 2030.
The trends that defined much of the last decade were reversed this year, with U.S. emissions on track to rise 1.9 percent in 2025 as higher gas prices have led to additional coal use, the Global Carbon Project said. In past years, U.S. and Europe had seen their carbon emissions decline, while China and India’s increased.
The outlook for future U.S. emission reductions has been further dimmed by rising electricity demand related to artificial intelligence and President Donald Trump’s moves to slash spending on clean energy. In Europe, low hydropower and wind output resulted in more gas generation. And an early monsoon season in India resulted in lower electricity demand for cooling, meaning emissions there are in line to rise a relatively modest 1.4 percent.
The biggest questions going forward are in China, which accounts for 32 percent of global emissions, by far the most of any nation. Climate pollution in China is on track to grow 0.4 percent this year. But whether that is a result of lower economic growth or structural trends, like the massive adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy, remains to be seen.
Some analysts have predicted that emissions in China could peak this year, as a result of high EV sales and massive renewable installations. But others urged caution. Some observers had predicted a decade ago that China’s emissions were on the verge of peaking, when the growth of renewable energy was almost enough to account for increases in Chinese energy demand, said Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway.
“We’re still saying the same thing today,” he said.
The world can claim some progress since it inked the Paris Agreement a decade ago. Global emissions grew at an average annual rate of 0.8 percent between 2015 and 2025, down from 2.1 percent the previous decade. Those trends reflect a rapidly changing world that nevertheless remains firmly rooted to traditional energy supplies.
The world has succeeded in adopting vast quantities of clean energy. Electric vehicles amounted to 20 percent of global car sales last year, while renewables set an installation record for the 23rd consecutive year, according to the IEA. When combined with hydro, renewables like wind and solar now generate more electricity than coal. And yet coal, oil and gas all continue to set consumption records because total global energy demand continues to rise.
“We’ve maybe miscalculated in our sort of conceptualization of the problem,” Peters said. “We’ve been focusing on are renewables doing great, etc, etc and we’re just sort of assuming that this will mean that fossil fuels will go down. Maybe eventually, but they are being pretty persistent and stubborn.”
