Climate, the world's first drop in CO2 from electricity in 2019

Carbon dioxide (Co2) emissions from electricity production in the world decreased by 2% in 2019 mainly due to a 3% drop in energy generation from coal-fired power plants. Both reductions are the most significant since 1990, but if coal use has collapsed in Europe and the United States, it has grown in China, which has become responsible for half of global coal production for the first time. This is what emerges from the first analysis of the global electricity sector for 2019 made by Ember, an independent climate think-tank focused on the abandonment of coal and on the energy transition of the electricity sector at a global level towards clean sources.

Worldwide, the production of electricity from wind and solar plants has increased by 15% in 2019, generating 8% of global electricity. In the EU, the production of electricity from coal-fired power plants in 2019 fell by 24% and 16% in the United States, halving in both cases compared to 2007. Since then, Co2 emissions from the energy sector in the USA have fallen between 19 and 32% for the greater use of natural gas and shale gas, while in the EU the drop was 43% thanks to renewables. In Europe 18% of electricity now comes from wind and solar, 11% in the United States, 9% in China and 8% in India.

To meet the Paris climate agreement of 2015 and therefore contain the average increase in global temperature within 1.5 degrees centigrade by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial levels, a 15% growth rate in electricity production is required every year wind and solar, the report underlines also indicating the 11% reduction of coal production per year.

The global decline of coal and emissions from power plants "is good news for the climate - says Dave Jones, Ember analyst and main author of the Report - but governments must drastically accelerate the transition of the electricity sector so that global production of coal collapses already in 2020. Switching from coal to gas simply means exchanging one fossil fuel for another. The cheapest and fastest way to end the production of electricity from coal is through a rapid spread of wind and solar energy ". (HANDLE).