Global CO2 emissions from the energy sector hit record highs last year despite surging clean power sources overtaking fossil fuels in advanced economies for the first time, says the International Energy Agency (IEA) in a new report.
Emissions increased by 410 million tonnes, or 1.1%, in 2023, taking them to a record 37.4 billion tonnes, said the IEA in analysis released on Friday.
However despite rising energy demands the increase in emissions was smaller than the previous year, when it jumped by 490 million tonnes, showing that clean energy sources are making inroads into emissions.
Without clean energy technologies, the IEA said the global increase in CO2 emissions in the last five years would have been “three times larger”.
An “exceptional shortfall” in hydropower due to extreme droughts in China, the US and other economies accounted for over 40% of the rise in emissions last year, said the IEA, “as countries turned largely to fossil fuel alternatives to plug the gap.”
The IEA said that advanced economies saw a record fall in their CO2 emissions in 2023 even as their GDP grew. “Their emissions dropped to a 50-year low while coal demand fell back 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 like renewables and nuclear, said the IEA.
“The clean energy transition has undergone a series of stress tests in the last five years – and it has demonstrated its resilience,” said IEA chief Fatih Birol.
“A pandemic, an energy crisis and geopolitical instability all had the potential to derail efforts to build cleaner and more secure energy systems. Instead, we’ve seen the opposite in many economies.”
The report did however find that clean energy deployment remains “overly concentrated” in advanced economies and China, with a need for “greater international efforts to increase clean energy investment and deployment in emerging and developing economies.”
