Where the world is (and isn’t) making progress on climate change

To tackle dangerous global warming, countries have started cleaning their power plants and cars. But emissions from heavy industry – such as cement, steel or chemical plants – are harder to curb and are now on track to become by far the world’s largest source of global warming pollution.

That’s a big takeaway a new, detailed forecast of global greenhouse gas emissions published Thursday by the Rhodium Group, a research firm. Overall, the report estimates that the world is currently on track to warm roughly 2.8 degrees Celsius or 5 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Many world leaders and scientists consider such warming dangerous.

It is inherently difficult to predict emissions so far into the future. but the forecast provides a rough indication of where countries appear poised to make progress on climate change in the coming years – and where they are still struggling.

Global greenhouse gas emissions are expected rise to record highs this year. However, there are signs that planet-warming pollution from two key sectors – electricity and transport – could start to decline in the not-so-distant future.

In the electricity sector, which is currently responsible for a quarter of greenhouse gases, countries may be on the verge of a breakthrough. Solar and wind energy are growing so fast that some experts say so expect now Global demand for electricity from fossil fuels will peak this decade. That process has already begun in the United States and Europe, where electricity production from coal is declining, and in China could follow soon.

CO2 emissions from the transport sector are also expected to fall by mid-century due to the rapid spread of electric vehicles, which now represent one in five new car sales worldwide. In countries such as Africa and Asia, smaller electric motorcycles, mopeds and rickshaws are already replacing almost a million barrels of oil per day.

Yet the report seems to indicate that neither electricity nor transportation appears to be on track to achieve zero emissions — which scientists say is ultimately needed to halt climate change.

That’s because most countries still rely on coal or natural gas to back up wind and solar energy, and there are no obvious solutions yet for decarbonizing trucks, planes and ships over long distances. Until countries solve these challenges – perhaps with new types of batteries, advanced nuclear reactors or clean hydrogen fuels – they will remain partially dependent on fossil fuels such as oil and gas.

“Ultimately, we are reaching the limits of what we can do with technologies that are widely available today,” said Kate Larsen, partner at Rhodium Group. That, in turn, could cause emissions to rise again later this century if demand for electricity and transport continues to grow.

To make its predictions, the Rhodium Group considered a wide range of estimates for economic growth, oil and gas prices, clean energy costs, and policy trends. The forecasts for the second half of the century are particularly uncertain because it is difficult to predict how technologies, economies, politics and demographics will change.

There are also countless buildings around the world that burn coal, oil, or natural gas for heating and cooking. These emissions are expected to decline modestly over the coming decades, partly due to efficiency improvements and a shift to cleaner electric technologies such as heat pumps, the report said. But without stronger measures, such as an effort to modernize older homes and buildings, emissions are unlikely to drop to zero.

Where emissions are expected to rise

Industry – which also includes the production of iron, steel, cement, chemicals, oil and gas – remains one of the most difficult sectors to clean up. It is also often overlooked in climate discussions. But industrial emissions are expected to rise dramatically in the coming decades.

They come from a wide variety of sources. Many factories burn coal or natural gas to produce enormous amounts of heat needed to make steam, temper glass, or turn iron into steel. Cement manufacturers emit carbon dioxide as part of the process of turning limestone into cement. The chemical industry uses fossil fuels as raw materials for its products.

In theory, there are technologies that can reduce emissions. Industrial heat pumps or thermal batteries could help factories generate heat from renewable electricity. Cement makers could do that capture and bury their carbon dioxide. Steel producers could use clean hydrogen instead of coal. But many of those solutions are expensive and still in their infancy.

“Not many clear winners have emerged yet,” said Morgan Bazilian, a professor of public policy at the Colorado School of Mines. Some governments are also reluctant to crack down on industrial emissions, fearing that factories and jobs could shift abroad to places with looser environmental regulations.

Without cleaner alternatives, the industry is expected to become by far the world’s biggest climate change problem. According to the Rhodium Group’s forecast, cement production alone will produce twice as many emissions as all the world’s cars combined for the rest of the century.

The biggest growth in industrial emissions is expected to come from emerging markets such as India, China, Southeast Asia and Africa. Yet many of the most promising early efforts to decarbonize cement and steel are taking place in wealthier countries like the United States and Europe.

“There’s a huge mismatch there,” says Anna Nilsson, a climate policy analyst at the NewClimate Institute, who recently helped write an extensive report on the world’s progress in reducing emissions from industry and other sectors. “There is a huge need to not only develop cleaner technologies, but also to ensure they can be used everywhere.”

The Rhodium Group’s analysis also predicts a rise in agricultural emissions, especially in places with significant population growth such as Africa, India, Brazil and Southeast Asia, where forests continue to be cleared for farmland. As societies become richer, they also tend to eat more meat, which has a major impact on the climate.

One of the best strategies to reduce agricultural emissions, experts say, would be to increase crop yields, that is, grow more food on less land. One recent report found that improvements in crop technology and agricultural practices are making farms more productive, but the changes are not happening fast enough. And many nations fall behind on a recent pledge to reverse and halt deforestation by 2030.

The Rhodium Group’s temperature forecast is largely consistent with other analyses, including those from the International Energy Agency Climate action tracker. But it differs in other ways, for example by taking a more detailed long-term view of emissions and assuming that climate policy will continue to evolve in line with historical trends.

In the future, however, countries could act much more aggressively than in the past, said Joel Jaeger, a senior researcher at the World Resources Institute who was not involved in the report.

“The fossil fuel industry might look at these current policy projections and think that oil and gas demand will still be high well into the year 2100,” Mr. Jaeger wrote in an email. “But when countries implement new policies to comply with the Paris Agreement and their net-zero policy pledges, that is absolutely not the case.”