Global CO₂ emissions 2017. Still no breakthrough can be seen, but the signs of a trend reversal are increasing

In 2016 global CO₂ emissions according to provisional calculations rose only slightly compared to 2015 with 0.4%. As a result, the average long-term growth of 1.7% (from 1990 to 2015) was once again clearly slowed down as in the previous year. As a result, CO₂ emissions in 2016 reached a new peak of 33.3 billion tonnes. Although this still does not signal a trend reversal, but CO₂ emissions have declined in many countries, particularly in some industrialized countries. For example. CO₂ emissions in the Annex I countries were reduced by a total of 0.7% or around 94 million tonnes. This is mainly attributed to developments in the USA (-1.7% or 90.0 million tonnes), Russia (-2.0% or 32.6 million tonnes), Great Britain (-5.5% or 23.0 million tonnes) and Japan (-1.5% or 18.0 million tonnes). Encouraging is also the fact that CO₂ emissions in China, the country with by far the highest emissions, have declined in 2016 as in the previous year - albeit with 0.2% quite weakly. It is less positive that CO₂ emissions in the EU-28 have increased again, with the exception of Great Britain, Portugal, Spain and Bulgaria, contrary to EU-wide targets.