CO2 stable for 3rd yr despite global growth

Global carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector held stable for the third straight year in 2016 despite the global economy continuing to expand, the International Energy Agency said yesterday.

By far the main culprit in global warming, carbon dioxide emissions stood at 32.1 billion tonnes last year, the IEA estimated.

This was the same level as the same as the previous two years, despite the global economy growing by 3.1 percent in 2016.

The IEA said the stabilisation of carbon dioxide emissions was the result of growing renewable power generation, switches from coal to natural gas, improvements in energy efficiency, as well as structural changes in the global economy.

"These three years of flat emissions in a growing global economy signal an emerging trend and that is certainly a cause for optimism, even if it is too soon to say that global emissions have definitely peaked," the IEA's executive director Fatih Birol said in a statement.

The IEA said carbon dioxide emissions dipped in both the United States and China, the world's two largest energy users and emitters, and were stable in Europe, offsetting increases in most of the rest of the world.

The agency, which advises the world's advanced economies on energy issues, said the United States achieved the largest decline in emissions at three percent. Emissions fell by one percent in China last year, it added.