The report, which was prepared by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, combined recent results from the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research with statistics for energy use and other activities. It showed that between 1990 and 2010, global CO2 emissions increased by 45 per cent. However, in many industrialised countries, emissions fell significantly; Russia, for example, showed a 28 per cent drop. Overall, the share of global emissions from industrialised countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol fell from two thirds in 1990 to less than half in 2010.

Although these countries have widely differing emission trends, they are likely to meet the collective Kyoto target of a 5.2 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2012, partly thanks to large emission reductions from economies in transition in the early 1990s and more recent reductions due to the 2008–09 recession.

However, continued growth in developing countries and economic recovery by industrialised countries led to a record-breaking 5.8 per cent increase in global CO2 emissions between 2009 and 2010. Most major economies contributed to this increase, led by China, India, the USA and the EU-27, which showed increases of ten per cent, nine per cent, four per cent and three per cent respectively.

November 2011