By Seher Dareen; editing by Alex Lawler, Nina Chestney and Nia Williams
LONDON, June 26 (Reuters)
Just when we thought the world was going green with energy, something seems to be going wrong. Everyone is aware of carbon emissions and fossil fuels and how they have contributed to the downfall of the global climate. However, it looks like something has gone wrong along the way. Different sectors, industries, and even individuals have been playing a role to try and use renewable resources to reduce carbon emissions; however, from the looks of things, in 2024, emissions seem to have increased instead of decreasing. What, then, is the main issue here?
As the world is trying to push for clean energy, CO₂ was at its highest last year
Global carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector hit a record high for the fourth year running last year as fossil fuel use kept rising even as renewable energy reached a record high, the Energy Institute’s annual statistical review of world energy showed on Thursday, June 5, 2025. The report’s figures highlight the challenge of trying to wean the world economy off fossil fuels.
However, at the same time, conflict in Ukraine has redrawn oil and gas flows from Russia, and fighting in the Middle East raises concern about the security of supplies. Last year was the hottest year on record, with global temperatures exceeding 1.5 °C (34.7 F) above the pre-industrial era for the first time. This is concerning because there are a lot of negative effects that come with this.
A statistical breakdown of how the rise in carbon dioxide energy levels has occurred
The world saw a 2% annual rise in total energy supply in 2024, with all sources of energy, such as oil, gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, and renewable energy, registering increases, which last occurred in 2006, a report said. This led to carbon emissions increasing by around 1% in 2024 and exceeding the record level set the previous year at 40.8 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Of all the global fossil fuels, natural gas saw the biggest increase in generation, growing 2.5%. Meanwhile, coal grew by 1.2% to remain the largest source of generation globally, while oil growth was under 1%. Wind and solar energy expanded by 16% in 2024, nine times faster than total energy demand, the report showed.
Is fighting for the climate to be green all in vain?
Wafa Jafri, a partner at accounting and auditing giant KPMG, said:
“COP28 set out a bold vision to triple global renewables by 2030, but progress is proving uneven and despite the rapid growth we have seen globally we are still not at the pace required.”
You can see how the world is trying by all means to come up with and produce clean energy products, inventions, and so forth. For example, we have electric vehicles, hydrogen, ammonia, air, and many more that engineers, scientists, and researchers have been trying to put together so that the world’s carbon emissions are reduced; however, from this information, it does not look good.
Therefore, is it all in vain? Are we wasting our time? Perhaps all these need a little more time. It is also important to realise that not every country, nation, region, or location has access to some of the resources and technologies that China, Japan, and the USA have that make it easy for them to even generate wind energy or come up with solar solutions. Right now, it is just a matter of trying to find other ways to reduce these emissions. Additionally, we have to understand that it is not everyone or every region actually understands the importance, hence the peak in harmful carbon dioxide emissions.
GCN.com/Reuters.