Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are predicted to exceed last year’s record levels in 2024, dashing hopes that planet-warming emissions will peak this year.

“Reducing emissions is more urgent than ever, and there is only one way to do this: massively reduce fossil emissions,” he says Pierre Friedlingstein at the University of Exeter in England.

This is according to the latest Global Carbon Budget reportA preliminary accounting of CO2 emissions to date, with year-end projections, by Friedlingstein and colleagues. This report was announced at the COP29 summit currently being held in Azerbaijan, where countries aim to set new fiscal targets to address climate change.

Last year, some researchers predicted emissions would peak in 2024, but the report finds human-caused CO2 emissions will reach a record high of 41.6 gigatonnes in 2024, up 2 percent from the record in 2023. Almost 90 percent of this total consists of emissions from burning fossil fuels. The rest is mostly due to changes in the land due to deforestation and wildfires.

Although the rate of increase in fossil fuel emissions is 0.8 percent, half of that in 2023, this rate remains above the average rate over the last decade. “(The slower speed) is a good sign, but it’s still miles away from where we need to get to,” Friedlingstein says.

Despite a long-term downward trend, projected emissions from land use change have also increased this year, largely due to drought-induced wildfires in the tropics. Part of the increase is also due to the collapse of the carbon sink, which usually removes about a quarter of our annual CO2 emissions from the atmosphere in 2023. This decline decreased by more than 40 percent last year and early 2024 as global temperatures increased under the influence of El Niño.

“2023 is an incredible glimpse of what could happen in a warmer world, with El Niño droughts and fires seeing record peaks in global temperatures,” he says Pep Canadall The report was co-authored by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia. “When we put all this together, we got almost a third less help removing CO2 from the atmosphere from the world’s forests last year than we did in the last decade.”

While this also adds to emissions in 2024, researchers predict that this “land carbon sink” will greatly improve as the warming effect of El Niño subsides. “This is not a long-term collapse,” says Friedlingstein.

The report reveals that CO2 emissions in China, which accounts for almost a third of the global total, are projected to increase by only 0.2 percent in 2024 compared to 2023. Because of the large margin of error in this projection for China’s emissions, it’s possible they may actually remain flat or go down, Canadell said. India’s emissions also increased at a slower rate than last year, rising by just under 5 percent. In the US and the EU, emissions continued to fall, albeit at a much slower rate than last year.

High temperatures, which increase the demand for electricity for air conditioning, are also a major reason why fossil fuel emissions will continue to rise despite the massive increase in renewable energy sources in 2024. Neil Grant at Climate Analytics, a think tank in Germany. “Most people have been a little bit surprised by the level of electricity demand this year,” whether it’s from electric vehicles, data centers or manufacturing, he says.

The report finds that if emissions continue at this level, the world will exceed the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels within six years, and will exceed the budget required to limit warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels within 27 years.

“We must accelerate, accelerate, accelerate the transition to renewable energy,” says Candell. “Climate change is like a slippery slope that we can keep falling down. “We have to hit the brakes as hard as possible to stop the fall.”