Global emissions of CO2 in 2022 rose less than originally feared: IEA

New Delhi: A new IEA analysis released on Thursday stated that the effects of increased use of coal and oil during the global energy crisis were kept to a minimum by the growth of solar, wind, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and energy efficiency. This was less of an increase than initially anticipated.

According to the new analysis, CO2 Emissions in 2022, even though the increase in emissions last year was significantly less than the exceptional jump of over 6% in 2021, emissions still continue to grow at an unsustainable rate, necessitating stronger action to speed up the transition to clean energy and put the world on a path to achieving its energy and climate goals, IANS reported.

The report is the first in a new series, the Global Energy Transitions Stocktake, which will bring together the IEA's latest analysis in one place, making it freely accessible in support of the first Global Stocktake in the lead-up to the COP28 Climate Change Conference in November.

Global energy-related CO2 emissions grew in 2022 by 0.9 per cent, or 321 million tonnes, reaching a new high of more than 36.8 billion tonnes, according to the report.

The rise in emissions was significantly slower than global economic growth of 3.2 per cent, signalling a return to a decade-long trend that was interrupted in 2021 by the rapid and emissions-intensive economic rebound from the Covid crisis.

Extreme weather events, including droughts and heatwaves, as well as an unusually large number of nuclear power plants being offline, contributed to the rise in emissions. But an additional 550 million tonnes of emissions were avoided by increased deployment of clean energy technologies.

"The impacts of the energy crisis didn't result in the major increase in global emissions that was initially feared -- and this is thanks to the outstanding growth of renewables, EVs, heat pumps and energy-efficient technologies. Without clean energy, the growth in CO2 emissions would have been nearly three times as high," said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.

"However, we still see emissions growing from fossil fuels, hindering efforts to meet the world's climate targets. International and national fossil fuel companies are making record revenues and need to take their share of responsibility, in line with their public pledges to meet climate goals. It's critical that they review their strategies to make sure they're aligned with meaningful emissions reductions."

CO2 emissions from coal grew by 1.6 per cent as the global energy crisis continued to spur a wave of gas-to-coal switching in Asia, and to a lesser degree in Europe.

While the increase in coal emissions was only around one-quarter of 2021's rise, it still far exceeded the last decade's average growth rate.

The increase in emissions from coal more than offset the 1.6 per cent decline in emissions from natural gas as supply continued to tighten following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and as European businesses and citizens responded with efforts to cut their gas use.

CO2 emissions from oil grew even more than those from coal, increasing by 2.5 per cent but still remaining below pre-pandemic levels. Around half of the year-on-year increase in oil emissions came from aviation as air travel continued to rebound from pandemic lows.