Fossil fuel CO2 emissions up slightly in 2022: IEA

Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion are expected to grow just 1 percent in 2022 despite concerns that the energy crisis could lead countries to slow their transition to renewables, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday.

The IEA predicted carbon dioxide emissions would stand at 33.8 billion tons in 2022, 300 million tons more than in 2021.

That increase was far smaller, however, than the 2-billion-ton jump the world experienced in 2021 as countries turned to fossil fuels to power their COVID-19 recoveries, it added.

The United Nations says greenhouse gas emissions must be halved by 2030 to keep the Paris Agreement temperature goals within reach - effectively a drop of some 8 percent each year this decade.

The energy crisis sparked by the Russia-Ukraine conflict had propped up some coal demand in 2022 due to hikes in natural gas prices, said the IEA. 

But the relatively small increase in coal emissions had been offset by widespread deployment of renewable tech, including electric vehicles - and this had prevented a carbon dioxide rise of some 1 billion tons in 2022.

"The encouraging news is that solar and wind are filling much of the gap, with the uptick in coal appearing to be relatively small and temporary," said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. 

"This means that carbon dioxide emissions are growing far less quickly this year than some people feared - and that policy actions by governments are driving real structural changes in the energy economy."

The IEA analysis showed that solar photovoltaic and wind capacity grew by more than 700 terawatt-hours in 2022, the largest single-year rise on record.