A view of the International Congress Center, home to the 2022 UN Climate Change Conference, more commonly known as the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, or COP27, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. (Photo by Mohamed Abdel Hamid/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The beginning of COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, means a year has passed since the world agreed to “keep 1.5°C alive” at the COP26 UN climate conference in Glasgow. Over the course of the intervening year, however, that tentative note of collective optimism – and Covid-19’s carbon emissions reductions – have been overtaken by geopolitics and a global energy crisis.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has resurrected fault lines in international relations not seen since the Cold War, while restrictions on Russian oil and gas have made ‘energy security‘, rather than climate policy, the political priority. Nevertheless, events ranging from record floods in Pakistan to record droughts in China continue to remind us that the climate problem is worsening.
Hope is not lost. Data reveals the transition to clean energy continues at a record pace, partly out of this new ambition for energy security. Some 257GW of renewable electricity capacity was installed in 2021, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). In China, the five-year plan for 2021–25 will add 874GW of solar and wind capacity to the grid – equivalent to the entire electrical network of Europe. The Inflation Reduction Act in the US means the country’s wind power capacity should double, and solar power capacity quadruple, by 2030.
To mark the opening of COP27, Energy Monitor tracked the latest carbon emissions data: the fundamental metric that determines our progress in addressing climate change. In doing so, we can see just how far the world is from reaching the ambition laid out in the 2015 Paris Agreement: net-zero emissions by mid-century, which is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says is required for a good chance of keeping global warming to the “safe” limit of 1.5°C.
COP27 carbon emissions: up and up
Headline global emissions data remains