Climate crisis: Global CO2 emissions are rising – despite the decline in oil

The world is using less oil – and yet climate-damaging emissions are still rising. Actually, we should have gotten things right long ago in order to tame the crisis.

China - the largest emitter of greenhouse gases - continues to rely on coal to generate its electricity, while the country is also the world champion in the expansion of renewable energies. Photo: Johannes Neudecker/dpa

Bremerhaven/Munich. Global climate-damaging CO2 emissions are still rising. In 2026, total CO2 emissions are expected to be 43.3 billion tons, higher than last year's 42.8 billion tons, according to the Global Carbon Project. In order to get the climate crisis under control, emissions would have to fall significantly long ago.

The international “Global Carbon Project” with more than 140 researchers – including from the Alfred Wegener Institute and Munich’s Ludwig Maximilians University – provides an annual overview of how much CO2 is in the atmosphere and is entering it.

Emissions from coal, oil and gas are declining

After all, emissions caused by fossil fuels - coal, oil and gas - have declined this year, namely by 0.4 percent to 38.2 billion tons, according to the report in the journal “Earth System Science Data”. The main reason for this was a drop in oil consumption of minus 1.9 percent - according to the researchers, presumably a reaction to the Iran war and its drastic consequences.

“A decline in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels is encouraging, but a reduction that is partly due to geopolitical shocks does not represent a sustainable climate solution,” emphasizes study leader Pierre Friedlingstein from the Global Systems Institute in Exeter.

“While renewable energy and electric vehicles are increasingly offsetting the increase in energy demand, further acceleration is required if global emissions are to peak and then decline sustainably,” Friedlingstein continued.

Fires and damaged forests exacerbate the problem

The fact that emissions continue to rise overall, even though fossil fuels have declined, is due to land use: "Fires in drained peat landscapes and the degradation of forests in equatorial Asia in particular caused more emissions. The first signs of the beginning of El Niño can be seen here," explains Clemens Schwingshackl from the LMU Munich. The authors emphasize that the full effects of the climate phenomenon, which will be extremely severe this time, will only become apparent next year.

In order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times in the long term, the world is expected to emit a maximum of 150 billion tons of CO2 - according to the report, this budget would be used up in less than four years at current levels.

CO2 must therefore also be actively removed from the atmosphere. This is achieved, on the one hand, through measures such as reforestation and, on the other hand, through innovative technologies for CO2 capture and storage, such as biochar. However, so far these have only played an extremely small role: “New CO2 extraction processes have only offset 30 minutes of global fossil CO2 emissions in an entire year,” says geographer and co-author Julia Pongratz from the LMU Munich. Reducing emissions must therefore remain the top priority. At the same time, an expansion of technologies is necessary.

How severe the decline should actually be

According to the United Nations' recently released Emissions Gap Report, global greenhouse gas emissions would need to fall significantly to return to 1.5 degrees or below by the end of the century - by 18 percent by 2030, 45 percent by 2035 and 69 percent by 2040, all compared to 2025 levels.

Such a steep downward curve is not foreseeable: even if countries implement all of their planned climate protection measures, according to UN calculations, emissions would only fall by up to 8 percent by 2030 - and by up to 15 percent by 2035.

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