Why in news?
Global Carbon Project report, 2019 has been released.
What is it?
- The Global Carbon Project is an international research project within the Future Earth research initiative on global sustainability.
- It aims to develop a comprehensive picture of the global carbon cycle, including both its biophysical and human dimensions together.
- The Global Carbon Budget 2019 is the 14th edition of the annual update that started in 2006.
Highlights:
- The report shows a continued increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emission from burning fossil fuels by 0.6 per cent.
- The rate was dropped by 1.5 per cent in 2017 and 2.1 per cent in 2018.
- The lower growth rate is due to:
- The decline in coal use in Europe (-10%) and USA (-10.5%),
- a slowdown in coal use in China and India,
- weaker economic growth globally, in particular in China and India,
- a strong monsoon season in India, which increased the productivity of hydroelectric power
- This decrease is offset by a strong emission growth from natural gas use at 2.6% in 2019 as it has become a preferred alternative source of energy to coal in every region of the world.
- While coal (42%) and oil (34%) usages are still dominated sources of CO2 emission over the last decade compared to natural gas (19%).
- Deforestation fires around the world have also contributed to the rise of emission.
- The total CO2 emissions from human activities, which includes emission of burning fossil fuels and land-use change, are set to reach 43.1 billion ton in 2019.
- The 10 biggest emitters in 2018 are China, U.S., India, Russia, Japan, Germany, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Canada.
- The EU as a region of countries ranks third.
