Chapter 2: Global emissions trends

The Emissions Gap Report, published in the framework of the United Nation Environment Programme every year, provides an annual, independent science-based assessment of the gap between the pledged greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions and the reductions required to align with the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, as well as opportunities to bridge this gap. As in previous years, Chapter 2 of the Emissions Gap Report focuses on total net GHG emissions across all major groups of anthropogenic sources and sinks reported under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) up to and including 2023. It starts with global trends by GHGs before describing trends by sector and the emissions of major emitters using as main data source the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) developed by JRC. EDGAR data have been used also in the Executive Summary of the 2024 Emission Gap Report. Main finding described in this chapter is the record of global GHG emissions that reached the value of 57.1 GtCO2e in 2023, growing by 1.3 per cent (0.7 GtCO2e) from the previous year. This rate is above the average rate in the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic (2010–2019), when GHG emissions growth averaged 0.8 per cent per year. Moreover, fossil CO2 emissions account for approximately 68 per cent of current GHG emissions. These emissions are driven by the combustion of coal, oil and gas in the energy sector, as well as industrial processes associated with the manufacture of metals, cement and other materials. Finally, Chapter two reports a decline by 6.5 per cent in 2023 of the Global net LULUCF CO2 emissions. These estimates are based on an early projection of land-use activity with relatively high uncertainties.

LAMB William;  PATHAK Minal;  CRIPPA Monica;  GUIZZARDI Diego;  GRASSI Giacomo;  GLEN Peters;  PONGRATZ Julia;  CHATURVEDI Vaibhav; 

2024-11-28

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

JRC139848

978-92-807-4185-8 (online),   

https://wedocs.unep.org/20.500.11822/46404,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC139848,   

10.59117/20.500.11822/46404 (online),