Giving Compass' Take:

• Josie Garthwaite-Stanford reports that growing energy demand is outpacing increasing efficiency and use of renewables, driving up fossil fuel emissions that some experts thought had previously peaked.  

• How can funders help to balance the needs of energy users - especially new energy users - with environmental priorities? 

• Learn about prioritizing scale in energy projects. 

Global fossil fuel emissions are on track to rise for a second year in a row, primarily due to growing energy use, a new study warns.

The projections come in a week when international negotiators are gathering in the coal-mining city of Katowice, Poland, to work out the rules for implementing the Paris climate agreement. Under the 2015 accord, hundreds of nations pledged to cut carbon emissions and keep global warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures.

“We thought, perhaps hoped, emissions had peaked a few years ago,” says Rob Jackson, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford University’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. “After two years of renewed growth, that was wishful thinking.”

Researchers estimate global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel sources, which represent roughly 90 percent of all emissions from human activities, will reach a record high of just over 37 billion tons in 2018, an increase of 2.7 percent over emissions output in 2017.

“Global energy demand is outpacing powerful growth in renewables and energy efficiency,” Jackson says. “The clock is ticking in our struggle to keep warming below 2 degrees.”

Read the full article about fossil fuel emissions by Josie Garthwaite-Stanford at Futurity.