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Addendum to 'A fast method for updating global fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions'
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2010 Environ. Res. Lett. 5 039701
(http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/3/039701)
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IOP PUBLISHING
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Environ. Res. Lett. 5 (2010) 039701 (2pp)
doi:10.1088/1748-9326/5/3/039701
ADDENDUM
Addendum to ‘A fast method for
updating global fossil fuel carbon dioxide
emissions’
G Myhre1, K Alterskjær2 and D Lowe3
1
Center for International Climate and Environmental Research—Oslo (CICERO),
N-0318 Oslo, Norway
2
Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Norway
3
Antarctic Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
E-mail: gunnar.myhre@cicero.uio.no
Received 25 June 2010
Accepted for publication 12 August 2010
Published 20 August 2010
Online at stacks.iop.org/ERL/5/039701
Abstract
Updated data for fossil fuel emissions of CO2 show a decline of 1.3% during 2009. This ended
a decade with strong increase in the fossil fuel CO2 emissions. The regional differences in the
change in the CO2 emissions are substantial for 2009. The share of coal as a fuel has increased
since 2002 and this continues also in 2009.
Keywords: fossil fuel emissions, carbon dioxide
The main driver of anthropogenic climate change is CO2
emissions. In a previous study we adopted BP fossil fuel
statistics as a fast method to update the global fossil fuel CO2
emissions (Myhre et al 2009). Newly released data from
BP show that fossil fuel CO2 emissions declined by 1.3%
during 2009, similar to the drop in global GDP estimated to be
0.8% (CIA World Factbook) and 0.6% (International Monetary
Fund). The financial crises started in 2008 and led to a smaller
growth in emissions in 2008 than in the previous five years,
with 2009 the first year of decline in the last decade. Despite
this recent decline, fossil fuel CO2 emissions are now almost
40% higher than in 1990 and above most IPCC projections (see
figure 1). Consumption data from BP was released on 9 June
and the method used to calculate fossil fuel CO2 emissions
from this data is shown to be within 2.5% of estimates from
the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (Myhre et al
2009). This reduction in fossil fuel CO2 emissions is weaker
than estimated in projections at the end of last year (Le Quere
et al 2009).
1748-9326/10/039701+02$30.00
Figure 1. Global and annual fossil fuel CO2 emissions for actual
emissions based on BP data as well as IPCC scenarios.
Coal surpassed oil as the fuel type of the highest CO2
emissions in 2006 and the share from coal is still increasing.
1
© 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK
Environ. Res. Lett. 5 (2010) 039701
Addendum
The decrease in the fossil fuel CO2 emissions is prevailing
in the whole western world, especially in the European
Union (−7%) and USA (−7%) where reductions are greater
than would be expected due to the economic recession
alone. China and India, on the other hand, increased their
emissions by 9% and 6%, respectively. These increases are
similar to the rise in their GDP. China actually increased
its growth rate in fossil fuel CO2 emissions in 2009 from
7% in 2008 and also increased its share of global fossil
fuel CO2 emissions from 22% in 2008 to 24% in 2009 (see
figure 2).
The enhancement in fossil fuel CO2 emissions has to
a large extent followed business-as-usual scenarios over the
last two decades.
Without strong mitigation efforts or
technological developments a further 30–50% increase in
emissions can be expected over the next two decades.
References
Figure 2. Distribution of the fossil fuel CO2 emissions for the eight
regions in 2009. D1 represents developed countries except those
given separately for EU, Japan, and USA. D2 and D3 are the
developing and least developed countries respectively and a further
description is given in Raupach et al (2007).
Le Quere C et al 2009 Trends in the sources and sinks of carbon
dioxide Nat. Geosci. 2 831–6
Myhre G, Alterskjaer K and Lowe D 2009 A fast method for
updating global fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions Environ.
Res. Lett. 4 034012
Raupach M R et al 2007 Global and regional drivers of
accelerating CO2 emissions Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA
104 10288–93
Unlike oil and gas, emissions from coal showed no decline
from 2008 to 2009 and the share from coal is now 40% of the
total fossil fuel CO2 emissions.
2