BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept.14
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
Energy-related CO2 emissions will be halved between 2018 and 2050, to around 17 GtCO2/yr in mid-century, Trend reports citing Germany-based DNV GL.
“However, this long-term forecast hides the fact that emissions in 2035 will not have dropped below 30 GtCO2/yr, remaining stubbornly high. Emissions will fall just 15% in the next 15 years, before then dropping 40 percent in the 15 years to 2050. This masks significant regional variations.
“Greater China emitted 31 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions in 2018 with 10.5 GtCO2. The region is followed by 5.5 GtCO2 from North America and 3.5 GtCO2 from Europe. Greater China’s emissions will increase until 2030 according to our forecast, before undergoing a rapid decline up to 2050, with the decline driven by ambitious policies. North America and Europe have already begun to reduce their CO2 emissions, along with OECD Pacific. These declines are largely due to falling energy demand, growing use of renewable energy, natural gas replacing coal in power generation, and changes to the energy sources used in the transport sector. Europe will be the second-lowest carbon emitter after OECD Pacific by 2050.
“Latin America will also see steady reductions in emissions, starting from a relatively low level. The region’s power generation sector, for example, is already dominated by hydropower and we forecast that non-fossil energy production will be more than 95 percent by 2050. However, Latin America will not see the same drops in oil demand from changes in transport as the other regions where we forecast that emissions will fall. We forecast the Indian Subcontinent, South East Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa to see higher emissions in 2050 than in 2018. Their trajectory is led by growing populations and the need to provide a secure, affordable supply of energy as energy demand grows. North East Eurasia, and Middle East and North Africa will see moderate declines in emissions to 2050, as natural gas and oil maintain dominant shares of primary energy demand in these regions and coal use is marginalized,” reads the report released by DNV GL.
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