BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 1. In 2023, global emissions increased by 1.1 percent, roughly 410 million tonnes of CO2, Trend reports.
According to recent research made by the International Energy Agency (IEA), this growth rate was slower than the global GDP growth of about 3 percent in the same year.
This pattern continued from the previous years, where CO2 emissions increased less rapidly than the global economic activity, the agency noted. Over the decade leading to 2023, global CO2 emissions grew by just over 0.5 percent per year. This trend is not solely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as emissions had rebounded to pre-pandemic levels by 2021. It's also not because of slow global GDP growth, which averaged a strong 3 percent per year over the last decade, consistent with the average of the past 50 years.
As the IEA explains, the slowdown in emissions is mainly attributed to the acceleration of clean energy projects. In 2023, global additions of wind and solar PV capacity hit a record, reaching nearly 540 GW – a 75 percent increase from 2022. Sales of electric cars globally also went up to about 14 million, marking a 35-percent increase from 2022.
Clean energy is making a big difference in reducing global CO2 emissions. Thanks to COVID-19 stimulus packages, there's been a notable increase in deploying clean energy since 2019. Between 2019 and 2023, total energy-related emissions went up by about 900 Mt. If it weren't for the increased use of five key clean energy technologies since 2019 – solar PV, wind power, nuclear power, heat pumps, and electric cars – emissions growth would have been three times higher.