World carbon emissions reached record high in 2017: IEA

28, Mar 2018 | CJP Team

Preliminary estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA) indicate that the world’s energy demand increased by 2.1% in 2017, more than double the rate of increase in 2016, Reuters reported. In 2016, energy demand increased by 0.9%. On average, it also rose by 0.9% in the previous five years. According to the IEA, strong economic growth fueled the increase in energy demand, and as developments in energy efficiency also declined, the world’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions spiked by 1.4% in 2017, reaching a record high of 32.5 gigatonnes. Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director, noted that this trend indicates “that current efforts to combat climate change are far from sufficient,” adding that “there has been a dramatic slowdown in the rate of improvement in global energy efficiency as policy makers have put less focus in this area.” More than 70% of the increase in the world’s energy demand was fulfilled by fossil fuels, with nearly all of the remainder being fulfilled by renewable energy.