From Climate Scepticism

By Jit

An update on the ongoing triumphal success of international climate agreements

The other day Robin noted that the 2023 Edgar emissions database had been released. You know me: I like numbers. So I decided to pull together a series of bullet points outlining how CO₂ emissions changed between 2022 and 2023. All data comes from the Edgar spreadsheet, available at the link.

1. Global Emissions

The global total emissions in 2023 were 39024 Mt CO₂, up 777 Mt from 2022’s 38247 Mt.

It is no longer possible to pretend that the pre-Covid high was the global crest. The average increase, year-on-year since 1970, has been ~ 440 Mt CO₂/yr. Last year we added far more than that. One would not be justified in claiming that the international agreements are anything more significant than pieces of paper.

2. Top- and bottom-ranked countries

The countries with the most emissions are largely those that you would expect in the absence of any data. Here are the top ten. (The UK now ranks 19th.)

Country	CO2 emissions Mt
China	13260
United States	4682
India	2955
Russia	2070
Japan	945
Iran	779
Indonesia	675
Saudi Arabia	623
Germany	583
Canada	575

Regarding increases and decreases, this list shows the CO₂ emissions changes ranked from highest to lowest for every country with more than 1 trillion US GDP (about 30 countries). Slightly more countries in this subset are decreasing emissions than are increasing them, but the net is an increase.

Country	Change in CO2 emissions 2022-23 Mt
China	733
India	214
Viet Nam	48
Russia	44
Mexico	21
Iran	18
Indonesia	18
Saudi Arabia	18
Philippines	11
Malaysia	9
Türkiye	5
Egypt	2
Bangladesh	1
Brazil	1
Canada	0
Australia	-1
Thailand	-2
Nigeria	-2
Taiwan	-8
Argentina	-10
Netherlands	-10
South Korea	-14
Pakistan	-18
Spain and Andorra	-18
United Kingdom	-25
Italy, San Marino and the Holy See	-27
France and Monaco	-28
Poland	-30
Japan	-65
Germany	-77
United States	-105

3. Per-capita emissions

The usual countries are at the top and bottom of this list, although to the tyro some names might be surprising. Not all are petrostates: there are also tiny Pacific islands.

Top ten per capita emitters	t CO2/cap
Palau	63
Qatar	44
Kuwait	25
Brunei	21
New Caledonia	21
Bahrain	21
United Arab Emirates	20
Trinidad and Tobago	20
Gibraltar	20
Saudi Arabia	17

Bottom ten per-capita emitters	t CO2/cap
Madagascar	0.14
Sierra Leone	0.13
Rwanda	0.12
Eritrea	0.12
Niger	0.10
Central African Republic	0.07
Burundi	0.06
Somalia	0.05
Faroes	0.04
Democratic Republic of the Congo	0.04

At the top then we have Palau at 63 t CO₂ per person per year, and down at the bottom, the Democratic Republic of the Congo at 40 kg CO₂ per person per year. That’s a 1500-fold difference. The UK sits in about 70th place in a list of just over 200 countries at 4.4 t CO₂ per person per year.

4. The dragon in the room

China increased its emissions of CO₂ from 12527 Mt to 13260 Mt, a rise of 733 Mt. It is worth comparing this increase in a single year with the UK’s annual emissions of (2023) 302 Mt, down from 327 Mt in 2022. China’s annual increase of 733 represents ~2.4 times the UK’s annual emissions.

Very roughly, China is adding a new UK to the global emissions database every 5 months. Another way of phrasing this is that, if the UK vanished from the globe tomorrow, the gap our absence made in emissions would be made good by our Chinese friends in the space of 5 months.

5. GDP vs CO₂

I have alleged before that the countries that are growing in wealth are growing in energy use and that therefore they are growing their carbon dioxide emissions. Plotting the % change in GDP of the ~30 countries with GDP > 1 trillion US against the % change in their CO₂ emissions is an easy way to illustrate this. The GDP figures are back-calculated from within the Edgar spreadsheet: I divided the emissions by the emissions per GDP, with a suitable correction factor.

Of course, “mature” economies grow more slowly than developing countries, and those countries are likely to increase energy use and carbon dioxide emissions as they grow. But it cannot be denied that countries that are growing are doing so by increasing their energy use and that this is, so far, strictly tied to carbon dioxide emissions. It is possible to grow and cut CO₂ emissions, but your growth in this situation cannot help but be anaemic.

The sceptic does not believe that growth and Net Zero are compatible.

Caveat

The figures do not account for offshoring emissions. As we have discussed before, for the UK, these may amount to 50% of our emissions. Given such an inflation factor, our emissions would not look so flattering.

Previous versions

I showed some statistics along these lines earlier this year (albeit using total GHGs emitted as CO₂ eq). CO₂ is the lion’s share of this, but some 30% is CH₄ etc.