Acceleration in clean technology needed to ensure decline in world's emissions: Study

New Delhi: Electric vehicles and solar and wind power could offset up to 80 per cent of the increase in energy demand through 2028, but an acceleration in clean technology deployment is required to guarantee a peak and subsequent decline in the world's carbon emissions, new research by the Global Carbon Project projects.

The 2026 Global Carbon Budget, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, projects India's emissions to increase by 4.4 per cent in 2026 -- higher than the 3.5 per cent average annual growth over the last decade -- even as China's emissions are projected to decrease by 0.9 per cent, following two years of low emissions growth.

Researchers said an acceleration in energy transition has contributed to widespread decreases in fossil CO2 emissions -- 59 countries emitted less in 2025 than before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 even as their economies grew, 51 per cent more than during 2004-2010.


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The team included researchers from the UK's University of Exeter, the University of East Anglia (UEA), CICERO Centre for International Climate Research in Norway, Germany's Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich (LMU), Alfred-Wegener-Institut and more than 90 other institutions around the world.

Even in countries where total emissions increased over the 2019-2025 period, growth in emissions has slowed in all regions, including in China, India and other emerging economies, they said.

The study projects 38.2 billion tonnes of fossil carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions this year, a decrease of 0.4 per cent driven by an expansion of solar and wind power and the Iran conflict.

Emissions from oil are projected to decrease by 1.9 per cent -- likely a short-term response to the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict, the researchers said.

Two thirds of the continued rise in global energy demand is being met by increased solar and wind power and electric vehicles, they found.

However, clean energy growth is not yet fast enough for a durable decline in global fossil CO2 emissions, the team said.

"A decline in fossil CO2 emissions is encouraging, but a reduction driven partly by geopolitical shocks is not a sustainable climate solution," lead researcher Pierre Friedlingstein, professor and director of the Global Carbon Budget Office at the University of Exeter, said.

"The long-term answer remains the rapid deployment of clean energy technologies. While renewables and electric vehicles are increasingly offsetting growth in energy demand, further acceleration is needed if global emissions are to peak and enter a sustained decline," Friedlingstein said.

The authors wrote, "Electric vehicles and solar and wind power offset about 64-79 per cent of increasing emissions from demand growth through 2028; acceleration in clean technology deployment is needed to guarantee emissions peak and subsequent decline."

The remaining carbon budget -- or the amount of CO2 that can be emitted before warming reaches 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels -- was found to be 150 billion tonnes, which is equivalent to less than four years of emissions at the current rate.

With CO2 still rapidly accumulating in the atmosphere, the dangerous impacts of climate change continue to increase, the researchers said.