Emissions in the Platinum Age: the implications of rapid development for climate-change mitigation

Abstract

Rapid global economic growth, centred in Asia but now spread across the world, is driving rapid greenhouse-gas emissions growth, making earlier projections unrealistic. This paper develops new, illustrative business-as-usual projections for carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from fossil fuels and other sources and for non-CO 2 greenhouse gases. Making adjustments to 2007 World Energy Outlook projections to reflect more fully recent trends, we project annual emissions by 2030 to be almost double current volumes, 11 per cen…