Advanced economies saw a record fall in their CO2 emissions in 2023 – even as their GDPs grew.
That’s according to a report by the International Energy Agency. It attributed the decline to a combination of strong renewables deployment, coal-to-gas switching, energy efficiency improvements and softer industrial production.
The IEA said that emissions in advanced economies dropped to a 50-year low in 2023, while coal demand fell to levels not seen since the early 1900s. Last year was also the first in which at least half of electricity generation in advanced economies came from low-emissions sources, it said.
But – and it’s a big but – global emissions are still going the wrong way, having increased by 1.1% in 2023, according to the IEA. Still, its executive director, Fatih Birol, said that given world events, there were positives to take away from the report.
“A pandemic, an energy crisis and geopolitical instability all had the potential to derail efforts to build cleaner and more secure energy systems,” he said. “Instead, we’ve seen the opposite in many economies.”
He added: “We need far greater efforts to enable emerging and developing economies to ramp up clean energy investment.”
Image: Veeterzy
