We have been talking for a while now about the global warming and how does the CO2 and other gases contribute to it. We have also talked about how did most countries commit to reduce their emissions in their NDCs aligned with the Paris Agreement in order to limit global warming well below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
In this line, there have also been many corporate commitments to reduce their CO2eq emissions (link), such as Walmart, Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Siemens, Lyft, Cabify, BP and many others; which have presented their plans and strategies to reduce emissions and become carbon neutral by 2030-50. It is especially relevant that oil companies as BP have pledged to reduce their emissions by investing in renewable energy generation and cutting fossil fuel output (link), given that just 20 oil, gas and coal firms worldwide are responsible for 35% of total CO2eq emissions since 1965. Moreover, these same companies have intensively campaigned and invested large amounts to silence CO2 effects in global warming and climate change for decades (link).
Unfortunately, CO2 emissions have nothing but started to increase and, with business-as-usual growth plans specially in the developing world, we won't reach the peak of emissions by mid-century. While the developed world could have reached the emissions peak already, developing world is growing both in population and consumption per capita, thus increasing their emissions way faster than they have declined elsewhere.
On the other hand, even if developing countries have rapidly increased their emissions, their Co2eq emissions per capita are well below the developed world. The largest country by CO2 emissions is China, with a population of 1.4bn (growing 6m per year) and an energy consumption that is still 60% reliant on coal (the most polluting fossil fuel). In an effort to reverse this, President Xi Jinping’s has recently announced (September 2020, link) that China plans to go carbon-neutral by 2060. The details of this plan are still unknown.
Finally, we could also look at the sectors worldwide were these CO2 emissions are ultimately released. There are just 5 sectors that contribute to 90% of emissions worldwide:
Electricity production (~25%): these emissions come from the whole supply process of the generation of electricity in its several ways (coal and gas power plants, nuclear plants, wind and solar farms, hydroelectric power plants, etc.). Unfortunately, the source with a highest production is coal, which at the same time is the most polluting. While OECD countries are facing out coal power plants (link), developing countries find in coal a cheap resource to cover their growing population and growing per capita electricity demand.
Food, agriculture and land use (~24%): these emissions come from actually growing food / raising livestock we eat (50% of the habitable land and 70% of global fresh water withdrawals are used for agriculture, source) but also from the waste generated thereafter (6% of total, link). The sector with highest emissions is meat production, specially beef, given the large amount of resources needed to grow livestock and the methane from cattle's digestion (link).
Industry (~21%): these emissions come from a large variety of industries. The most polluting ones being iron and steel, cement and (petro)chemicals.
Transportation (~14%): these emissions come from transportation of goods and people, not related with the previous sectors. Most of the emissions come from road transportation, mostly by cars (40%) and trucks (34%). Then come aviation (11%) and shipping (11%), with rail (4%) being the least emitter.
Buildings (~6%): these emissions come from the construction and usage of buildings (i.e. water and air heating, freezing, etc.) both commercial (e.g. offices, restaurants, shops) and residential.
Finally, not everything are bad news. Our planet also has great "lungs" that absorb part of our emissions, these are called carbon sinks and are mainly soil and forests (~24%) and oceans (~17%). Unfortunately these are nothing but being destroyed at a increasing rate (e.g. 2020 Amazon fires, link). The remaining ~59% of CO2eq emissions remain in the atmosphere and contribute annually to global warming and climate change. I won't extend more in this topics because it deserves another full, deeper article; which I plan to write soon ;)