Without electric vehicles, solar, wind, and nuclear power, global emissions growth over the past five years would have been three times higher, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA). In 2023, every fifth new car in the world was electric, which curbed oil demand.
The new findings come from the annual update data on global energy-related CO2 emissions and the newly released of the first edition a new series of «Clean Energy Market Monitoring», which tracks the implementation of «clean» energy and broadly outlines the implications for global energy markets.
Renewable energy sources held back emissions growth in 2023
The bad news is that energy-related emissions increased in 2023. But the good news is that, thanks to the continued spread of clean energy technologies, global energy-related emissions did not increase as much as in 2022, even though overall energy demand growth accelerated, transmits Electrek.
In 2023, emissions increased by 410 million tons, or 1.1%, compared to an increase of 490 million tons a year earlier, reaching a record high of 37.4 billion tons.
Exceptional hydropower shortages due to extreme droughts in the United States, China and several other countries contributed to more than 40% of the emissions growth in 2023, as countries turned to fossil fuels to fill the gap. If not for the unusually low level of hydropower production, global emissions from electricity generation would have declined in 2023, making the overall increase in energy-related emissions much smaller.
In 2023, advanced economies saw a record drop in emissions, even as GDP grew. Their emissions fell to a 50-year low, and demand for coal dropped to the levels of the early 1900s.
Emissions reductions in advanced economies were driven by a combination of strong renewable energy development, coal-to-gas switching, energy efficiency improvements, and softer industrial production.
Last year marked the first time that at least half of electricity generation in developed countries came from low-emission sources such as renewables and nuclear power.
Impact of clean energy over the past 5 years
From 2019 to 2023, the growth of clean energy was twice as high as the growth of fossil fuel use. A new analysis shows that the deployment of clean energy over the past five years has significantly limited the growth in demand for fossil fuels, laying the groundwork for an accelerated transition this decade.
The deployment of wind and solar power in electricity systems around the world since 2019 has been sufficient to avoid annual coal consumption equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of India and Indonesia combined and to reduce annual natural gas demand by an amount equivalent to pre-war natural gas exports from Russia to the EU.
The growing number of electric vehicles on the road, accounting for one in five new car sales worldwide in 2023, has also played a significant role in keeping oil demand (in terms of energy intensity) from rising above pre-pandemic levels.