Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made, if any, of the level of worldwide carbon emissions in 2021; and what estimate they have made of projected carbon emissions in (1) 2022, (2) 2023, (3) 2024, and (4) 2025.

Various sources suggest a rebound in emissions in 2021, along with the economic recovery after the pandemic, to just below 2019 levels.

The United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Gap report 2021 estimated total global emissions of 58.1Gt CO2 for 2019 (the latest year available for all greenhouse gases). Fossil fuel CO₂ made up 37.9Gt, but fell 5.4% to 36Gt CO₂ in 2020. The International Energy Agency (IEA) and Global Carbon Project suggest a rebound in 2021 with an increase on 2020 levels of 4.8-4.9% in CO₂.

Various projections from UNEP, IEA, BloombergNEF and others suggest plateauing or slowly growing emissions beyond 2021 if we don’t increase global action. This underscores the need to urgently increase both ambition and action to deliver the commitments made at Glasgow, and go further to continue closing the gap to 1.5°C.

The Glasgow Climate Pact, combined with increased ambition across adaptation, finance and mitigation means that 1.5°C remains in sight, but only with concerted and immediate global efforts.

The pact will speed up the pace of climate action this decade, with all countries agreeing to revisit their emissions targets in 2022, as well as developed countries agreeing to double support for action on adapting to climate change by 2025.