What are the main sources of global CO2 emissions?

The COP26 climate conference starts in 10 days time, and governments are failing to meet the scale of the challenge to stop the climate crisis.

As the world’s population has grown to around 7.8 billion people, greenhouse gas emissions have exploded. The task of creating a society in which so many people can live sustainably can seem overwhelming, but it is vital that we analyse where the majority of these emissions come from so we can think of ways to reduce their impact on the environment through global warming.

Statistics from Our World in Data show that, unsurprisingly, the vast majority of emissions come from energy production.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that “the power and industry sectors combined dominate current global CO2 emissions, accounting for about 60% of total CO2 emissions. Future projections indicate that the share of these sectoral emissions will decline to around 50% of global CO2 emissions by 2050 (IEA, 2002). The CO2 emissions in these sectors are generated by boilers and furnaces burning fossil fuels and are typically emitted from large exhaust stacks.”

It is up to governments to intervene in markets which are producing such high levels of carbon emissions to force companies to invest in green transitions. Companies exist to make…