Emissions This year due to set another record with 'no sign' of fossil fuel peak

There is "no sign" of the transition away from burning fossil fuels that was pledged by the world's nations a year ago, with 2024 on track to set another new record for global carbon emissions.

- Damian Carrington

The new data, released at the UN's Cop29 climate conference in Azerbaijan, indicates that planet-heating emissions from coal, oil and gas will rise by 0.8% in 2024. In stark contrast, emissions must fall by 43% by 2030 for the world to have any chance of keeping to the 1.5C temperature target and limiting "increasingly dramatic" climate impacts on people around the globe.

The world's nations agreed at Cop28 in Dubai in 2023 to "transition away" from fossil fuels, a decision hailed as a landmark given that none of the previous 27 summits had called for restrictions on the primary cause of global heating. On Monday, the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, told the summit in Baku: "History will judge us by our actions, not by our words."

The rate of increase of carbon emissions has slowed over the past decade or so, as the rollout of renewable energy and electric vehicles has accelerated. But after a year when global heating has fuelled deadly heatwaves, floods and storms, the pressure is on the negotiators in Baku to finally reach the peak of fossil fuel burning and start a rapid decline.