Bad news: world CO ₂ emissions will be record in 2023

Countries would not be making sufficient efforts to develop renewable energy in their recovery plans.

According to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), global carbon dioxide emissions will reach new records in 2023. This is because countries would not be making sufficient efforts to develop renewable energy in their economic recovery plans.

The IEA explained that Western states invested large sums of money to sustain their economies from 2020. However, only 2% of the resources were allocated to renewable energies.

At the moment, some US$ 16 billion was spent to combat the pandemic, although most of it was destined to sanitary measures and support for companies and / or families. Along these lines, some US$ 2.3 trillion was used for economic recovery, but only US$ 380,000 million to promote green energy.

“Taking into account current public spending forecasts, CO2 emissions follow a trajectory that will take them to record levels in 2023 and will continue to grow in the following years,” the report explained.

While the emission trajectory proposed by the projection is 800 million tons lower in 2023 than it would have been without any sustainable effort, it is still 3.5 billion tons above the desired trajectory.

For his part, Fatih Birol, director of the IEA, said that “since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, numerous governments stressed the importance of rebuilding with a better model, for a cleaner future, but many of them have yet to turn their words into deeds.”

The only truth remains reality. “Not only is investment in clean energy still far from what is needed to put the world on track to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century, but it is not even enough to prevent global emissions from reaching a new record,” Birol said.

The IEA estimates that an additional trillion dollars of green investment is needed annually over three years compared to what was agreed in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

The biggest problems are in developing countries, which still rely on the use of coal for energy. These regions account for only 20% of the investments needed to reduce their emissions.

Source: The Economist