We estimate country-, process-, GHG- and product-specific land-use emissions 1961-2017. Total emissions have increased to 14.6 GtCO2-eq in 2017 (~25% of anthropogenic GHG emissions). Our results may help prioritize mitigation efforts, but suggest drastic reductions in emissions will require similarly drastic changes in agricultural production and/or practices.
The costs of fires are much greater and more dispersed than the destroyed infrastructure. Of the $149 billion in losses due to 2018 California wildfires, only 19% were related to destroyed infrastructure. 22% of costs are health damages related to air pollution and 59% were indirect damages due to the broader disruption of economic supply chains.
African CO2 emissions were just 4% of global fossil fuel emissions in 2017, but have grown by nearrly 5% per year for nearly two decades. If the continent-wide such growth persists, by 2030 the continent's emissions will have risen by ~30% (to 1.6 Gt CO2), a sizeable quantity very much at odds with international climate targets.
We present daily estimates of country-level CO2 emissions for different sectors based on near-real-time activity data. This is a new dataset developed during the COVID pandemic that substantially advances the frontier of emissions monitoring. It also represents the genesis of a new international research collaborative, Carbon Monitor.
Using 39 years of hourly U.S. weather data and a macro-scale energy model, we show that currently available long-duration storage technologies like power-to-gas-to-power lower the cost of solar-wind-battery electricity systems.
We show that ambitious climate mitigation scenarios entail drastic, and perhaps un-appreciated, changes in the operating and/or retirement schedules of power infrastructure. For example, in 1.5 or 2°C scenarios, the median age of global coal plants at retirement is <10 years.