Oil emissions, down by 2 per cent, are the main driver of the drop, likely because of prolonged disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. The world’s demand for energy is growing, and clean sources, mainly solar and wind power, are increasingly meeting that additional need.
Lead researcher and director of the Global Carbon Budget Office at the University of Exeter, Pierre Friedlingstein, said clean energy was not growing fast enough to ensure a durable decline. “A decline in fossil CO2 emissions is encouraging, but a reduction driven partly by geopolitical shocks is not a sustainable climate solution,” he said. “While renewables and electric vehicles are increasingly offsetting growth in energy demand, further acceleration is needed if global emissions are to peak and enter a sustained decline.”
Total carbon emissions are set to rise from 42.8 billion tonnes last year to 43.3 billion tonnes in 2026, driven by El Niño-linked peat fires and forest degradation in South-East Asia. The amount of carbon that can still be emitted before warming reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is now 150 billion tonnes, which will be used up within four years at the current rate. The United Nations found this year that the world was on track to reach 2C warming by about 2050 and move towards 2.6C warming by the end of the century.
CSIRO chief research scientist and Global Carbon Project executive director Pep Canadell said the report’s message was that policy change was needed. “The point the report is trying to make is that we need to change these policies and be a little more aggressive in the way we look at the transition to net zero,” he said.
Some experts say the Iran war created a tipping point for accelerated global electrification, similar to the 1970s oil shocks that drove innovation in fuel efficiency. Solar and wind together are now the largest sources of growth in global electricity generation, overtaking coal and gas to meet over half of new electricity demand, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Gabrielle Kuiper, an energy researcher affiliated with CSIRO, said consumer electrification of transport was well underway. “I think the momentum is unstoppable,” she said. “We’ve reached the tipping point, particularly on EVs.”
The IEA reported last week that the shift to renewables is most pronounced in emerging economies, where the continued high oil price caused by the Iran conflict has accelerated uptake. The IEA forecasts global renewable capacity will grow by almost 4,800 gigawatts (GW) in the 2026–2031 period, 57 per cent more than in the previous six years. Growth in emerging and developing economies outside China is expected to match that in advanced economies for the first time. Off-grid solar PV capacity is expected to increase by 2.5 times to around 80 GW by 2031, led by Pakistan, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. However, growth still lags the COP28 pledge by nearly 200 countries to triple renewable capacity by 2030.
China’s emissions are set to fall by 0.9 per cent in 2026 due to a plunge in oil emissions and growth in renewable electricity generation. The world’s largest emitter produces 32 per cent of global emissions but was found to be the most active in deploying clean technologies and increasing carbon sinks through reforestation. US emissions are projected to decrease by 1.3 per cent, mainly because of dropping coal emissions, which spiked last year. India’s emissions are expected to increase by 4.4 per cent, above its annual average growth of 3.5 per cent over the past decade. The European Union’s emissions are expected to drop by 1.5 per cent, Japan’s by 1 per cent, while emissions for the rest of the world are set to fall by 0.7 per cent.
Dr Canadell said this year, for the first time, 40 countries had seen fossil fuel emissions decline over the last 10 years while their economies grew, double the number from the previous decade. “Certainly things are happening,” he said.
Emissions from aviation and shipping are projected to decrease by 1 per cent, partly due to reduced flights across the Middle East. Oceans and vegetation remove about half of all carbon dioxide emissions from human activities, but El Niño exacerbates drought and bushfire conditions, reducing plant absorption. Dr Canadell said the Amazon’s absorption rate declined by 66 per cent during the 2023/24 El Niño, which has since normalised. He warned a similar drop could occur towards the end of the year. “We’ll see the full force of El Niño in the sinks, particularly in the tropics, in the Amazon specifically, early next year,” he said. “It’s not good news for us because we know that the future of our climate is a warmer climate. Therefore, those land sinks will be less effective in removing that part of the 50 per cent carbon discount that these natural sinks are doing.”