Carbon emissions - latest news

There have been a few reports on carbon emissions this week.

Because of the recession, carbon emissions actually dropped in 2009, but not by as much as had been predicted.

Overall, global emissions dropped by 1.3% in 2009, but in previous years had been growing at about 3%/year, and is now expected to carry on growing at that rate. More details can be found here.

Under the Copenhagen Accord, 80 countries agreed to cut emissions by 2020. However, even if ALL these cuts are met, it will only provide about 60% of the cuts that are needed to stop temperatures rising by 2C. In fact, we could be on course for temperatures to increase by 4C by the end of the century.

Global emissions are currently running at about 48 GIGATONS/year.

If countries just carry on as normal, this will increase to 56 gigatons by 2020.

If all the pledges are met, this will result in emissions of 49 gigatons by 2020.

However, if we want to keep the temperature rise to 2C, emissions will have to fall to just 44 gigatons by 2020….

More info can be found on the BBC News website and the Daily Telegraph website.

Finally, shops have been criticised for leaving their doors open with the heating on, and using twice as much fuel for heating as necessary. More information can be found here.

This entry was posted on 25/11/2010 at 12:39 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.