The most recent Global Carbon Budget report has found that the world’s carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels reached a record high in 2024, pushing the planet further off track from avoiding the most destructive impacts of global heating.
By Cristen Hemingway Jaynes
The 2024 Global Carbon Budget — produced by the Global Carbon Project team of 120-plus scientists from around the world — projects that emissions from fossil carbon dioxide will reach 37.4 billion tonnes in 2024, an increase of 0.8 percent over the previous year, according to a press release from the Global Carbon Project.
“The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked,” said lead author of the study Professor Pierre Friedlingstein of Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, in the press release. “Time is running out to meet the Paris Agreement goals – and world leaders meeting at COP29 must bring about rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions to give us a chance of staying well below 2°C warming above pre-industrial levels.”
Total carbon dioxide emissions for 2024 are projected to be 41.6 billion tonnes, with 4.2 billion tonnes coming from deforestation and other land-use changes. Last year’s total emissions were 40.6 billion tonnes.
Over the course of the past decade, fossil carbon emissions have increased while carbon dioxide emissions from land-use changes have gone down on average, leaving total emissions approximately level for that period. In the past 10 years, overall emissions from land-use changes have gone down 20 percent.
This year, however, global emissions from both land-use changes and fossil carbon dioxide are in a position to rise. Drought conditions exacerbated emissions from deforestation, fires and forest degradation during the 2023-2024 El Niño climate event.
“Emissions from fires in 2024 have been above the average since the beginning of the satellite record in 2003, particularly due to the extreme 2023 wildfire season in Canada (which persisted in 2024) and intense drought in Brazil,” the press release said.
The permanent removal of carbon dioxide through new forests and reforestation offsets roughly half of emissions from permanent deforestation.
“Despite another rise in global emissions this year, the latest data shows evidence of widespread climate action, with the growing penetration of renewables and electric cars displacing fossil fuels, and decreasing deforestation emissions in the past decades confirmed for the first time,” said Professor Corinne Le Quéré, a research professor at University of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences, in the press release.
Dr. Glen Peters, co-author of the report and a senior researcher with Oslo’s CICERO Center for International Climate Research, pointed out that, for a peak in the world’s fossil fuel emissions to occur, more countries must speed up the pace of their emissions cuts.
“There are many signs of positive progress at the country level, and a feeling that a peak in global fossil CO2 emissions is imminent, but the global peak remains elusive. Climate action is a collective problem, and while gradual emission reductions are occurring in some countries, increases continue in others,” Peters said in the press release. “Progress in all countries needs to accelerate fast enough to put global emissions on a downward trajectory towards net zero.”
The scientists found that emissions from the United States — which represent 13 percent of the world’s total — are predicted to decrease by 0.6 percent this year. Meanwhile, India’s emissions — eight percent of the total — are projected to climb 4.6 percent. Emissions from the European Union — which make up seven percent — are likely to go down by 3.8 percent. The rest of the planet’s emissions — 38 percent of collective emissions overall — are projected to rise by 1.1 percent.
“Until we reach net zero CO2 emissions globally, world temperatures will continue to rise and cause increasingly severe impacts,” Friedlingstein added.
Another finding of the report was that current technology-based carbon removal only accounted for roughly one-millionth of fossil fuel carbon emissions.
Ocean– and land-based carbon sinks combined made up about half of total carbon dioxide removal in 2024, despite the negative impacts of climate change.
“Solar and wind is displacing fossil fuels in some countries, but then you have other countries where the economies are growing too strongly for renewables to keep up,” Peters said, as The New York Times reported. “When you put the whole global sum together, fossil fuels are still winning. An emissions peak could be around the corner, but we haven’t seen it yet.”
Cristen is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. She holds a JD and an Ocean & Coastal Law Certificate from the University of Oregon School of Law and an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. She is the author of the short story collection The Smallest of Entryways, as well as the travel biography, Ernest’s Way: An International Journey Through Hemingway’s Life.
