Emissions have peaked

Two recent graphs, from different articles, have given me hope that we might yet avoid catastrophic global warming.  The first chart come from Carbon Brief, which I referenced here.

Let's dig deeper into the chart.  

It shows the smoothed year-on-year change in electricity demand in China, and the year-on-year change in the supply of electricity, broken down into fossil fuels (mostly coal, but some gas) and clean energy.  Over the last 20 years, there have been 5 times when production of electricity from fossil fuels has fallen: in 2009 (the GFC); in 2012/13 (the Euro crisis); in 2016 (a global mid-cycle correction which was quite severe in China); in 2022 (Covid lock-downs); and this year.

This year is the first time that fossil fuel production has fallen when electricity demand growth is strong.   Notice how the size of the pale blue bars (renewables) has got bigger and bigger, as China has installed exponetially increasing quantities of wind, solar and batteries.  Second, notice how electricity demand has grown, as (a) the economy grew, and (b) EV sales exploded, with each peak tending to be higher than the previous one.

Right now, an annual expansion in clean energy production of +-600 terawatt-hours (TWh) is enough to more than satisfy demand, causing fossil fuel generation to decline.   The 20-year average annual increase in demand is 400 TWh, while over the last 8 years or so, it looks about 500 TWh.  Obviously, if China's growth accelerates back to the heady rates on the early 2000s (10% a year), given how much richer China is now than then, the increase in demand could easily exceed 800 TWh.  However, growth is unlikely to accelerate back to those levels  The recent GDP trend growth rate is about 7%, and, in my judgment, slowing, as China deals with its property crisis.  (Also, China overstates its GDP growth data, so the real growth rate is lower.  The data for growth in electricity demand and supply are better quality.)  

The second chart came from an article by the ABC,  which I  commented on here.

The projected increase in new clean energy generation capacity for the next 2 years is about 600 TWh.  In other words, it's now more than the average rise in electricity demand.  

Of course, there is an economic cycle, with demand rising at 800 TWh in boom years, and reducing to 200 to 400 TWh in slower years.  So we may have a pattern of  falling emissions during low-growth years, followed by modest rises when the economy is stronger.  Yet this doesn't take into account the exponential growth in new wind and solar output over the last 7 years.   It's risen from 200 TWh to 600 TWh in just five years.  And although the forecast for the next two years is for only limited growth, the costs of solar and batteries contimue to decline rapidly.  The exponential growth will continue.  By 2028, new clean energy output will be increasing by 800 TWh a year, or more, so that even in high growth years, Chinese emissions from electricity generation will be falling.  

China is by far the world's largest emitter of CO2, causing over 25% of global emissions, compared with the US at 18%, and the EU at 17%.   Europe's and the USA's emissions peaked years ago:

Source: Our World in Data

What this means is this: if China's emissions have peaked, global emissions have probably peaked too.

It's true that the Trump administration has embarked on an utterly demented attempt to return the USA to the 1950s,  but cheap Chinese solar panels, batteries and EVs, are persuading the rest of the world (for example, Pakistan)---the other 80% of emissions---to switch to clean energy.  Plus, Trump's high-handed trashing of tariff and trade agreements means that the USA's opposition to carbon border taxes will not be effective.  If the USA can arbitrarily raise tariffs, then so can the rest of the world.  And they will.  Moreover, renewables are much cheaper than fossil fuels.  As electricity prices soar in the USA, cooler heads might prevail.

The peak in global emissions doesn't mean global temperatures will stop rising.  Emissions will have to fall by 90% for that to happen.  But what these devlopments do mean is that emissions are now in secular decline.  And the sustained fall in the costs of clean energy means that the decline will accelerate as renewables and EVs get ever cheaper.  As the impacts of catastrophic global heating worsen, the world will take stronger and stronger measures to slash emissions.

Temperatures will go on rising, but for the first time, it looks as if, by the 2040s, the decade-by-decade increases will start falling.