The researchers found that no part of the world reduced the amount of carbon used to produce energy between 2000 and 2004, despite widespread publicity in support of greener sources of energy.
The world's recent carbon dioxide emissions are growing more rapidly than even the worst-case climate scenario used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say researchers.
The team, led by Michael Raupach of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, looked at the growth of CO2 emissions and found that emissions growth suddenly accelerated in 2000. During the 1990s, emissions grew by 1.1% per year on average, but the number shot up to 3.3% between 2000 and 2004, when the study ended.
When they compared the recent emissions trend to those the UN-backed IPCC drew up as its "worst case scenario", the team found the reality was at least as bad, if not worse (see graph, right).
The team then examined the changes between 1980 and 2004 in factors such as population, economic growth, energy efficiency and carbon efficiency (the amount used per unit of GDP). From this, they were able to determine why CO2 emissions accelerated after 2000.
They concluded that the rise in CO2 emissions is not due to a growth in global population, but a reduction in global efficiency. "We are not getting more efficient at using CO2 in the way we projected," explains co-author Corinne Le Quéré from the University of East Anglia in the UK.
Reversed trend
From the 1970s to the 1990s, the world as a whole was becoming better at producing more energy for the same CO2 emissions, and more GDP with less energy. But the trend reversed in 2000. "It's a problem because people are assuming we are heading towards a more energy efficient future and we are not," says Le Quéré.
The researchers found that no part of the world reduced the amount of carbon used to produce energy between 2000 and 2004, despite widespread publicity in support of greener sources of energy.
The analysis also showed that developing countries accounted for 73% of the growth in CO2 emissions in 2004, but only 41% of total emissions.
"If you follow anything to do with global policy or global economy these results will not be surprising," says Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK.
He says the results "turn the focus back to the process that is in place at the moment to create a new climate regime beyond 2012", when the Kyoto Protocol expires. He adds that drawing the conclusion that Kyoto has failed is "too crude an analysis".
"There are Kyoto Protocol successes," Hulme says citing "the fact that there is an international climate regime, an emissions trading scheme that works and a market in carbon offsets [in developing countries]. Kyoto made that first progress, and we have learned what worked and what didn't work. A post-Kyoto treaty will not be just more of the same."
Source:
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn11899-recent-cosub2sub-rises-exceed-worstcase-scenarios.html
