Global carbon emissions hit another record

IN “ICE ON FIRE”, a documentary narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio which premiered last night on HBO, the actor and environmental activist highlights the magnitude of the climate crisis and some of the tools available to fight it, from renewable energy to advanced batteries to carbon capture. A new report from BP suggests that recent progress on this front has been slow. In its annual statistical review of world energy, the British oil firm finds that the world’s power sector is spewing out ever more CO2. Overall emissions of greenhouse gases increased by 2% in 2018. In the power industry, emissions rose by 2.7%, the biggest increase in seven years. This was driven by a high number of days that were either unusually hot or cold, which boosted energy demand. Without a more sustainable energy mix, the low-carbon future Mr DiCaprio envisions will be a thing of Hollywood.

There are some grounds for optimism. Data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental group, show that the carbon intensity of the power sector—the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each unit of electricity generated—has fallen by 10% since 2010. That is in part because the use of renewable energy, including solar and wind, is up. Of the 78 countries tracked by BP, three-quarters have some form of renewable power, up from just a third twenty years ago. To make meaningful progress, however, renewable electricity production will have to keep pace with global energy demand, which jumped by 3.7% in 2018. Producers will also have to do more to remove coal, easily the dirtiest of the fossil fuels, from the electricity grid. Coal-fired power plants still supply more than a third of the world’s power (see map). In 2018, coal-based output increased for the second consecutive year, following three years of declines.