Action urged as climate report warns of record CO2 emissions in 2018

Governments have been urged to take urgent action after a new report predicted that global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industrial sources will reach a record high this year.

Research by the Global Carbon Project show emissions are expected to reach 37.1 billion metric tons in 2018, up by more than 2 percent year-on-year, due to sustained growth in oil and gas consumption.

The findings were published in report Wednesday on the sidelines of the ongoing 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Katowice, Poland.

The report said the rapid growth in low-carbon technologies still cannot bring a peak in global emissions or help keep the global temperature rise well below 2 C, as required by the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

"The 2018 rise in fossil CO2 emissions place us on a trajectory for warming that is currently well beyond 1.5 C," lead researcher Corinne Le Quere, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, was quoted as saying in a media release.

"It is not enough to support renewables," she said. "Fossil energy needs to be phased out, and efforts to decarbonize need to be expanded throughout the economy."

Amy Luers, executive director of Future Earth, added: "The continued rise in global emissions is deeply concerning. The recent IPCC report on risk of 1.5 C warming was a somber wake-up call even for many of us deep in the science.

"Tackling climate change has now become a win-win. We just need to start down the winning path," she said.