Global emissions of harmful carbon dioxide from the energy sector held to the previous year's level without an economic incentive for the first time in 40 years the International Energy Agency has said.
In news that underscores one of the most critical selling points for the nuclear power industry, the IEA said that 2014 represents the first time since 1974 that C02 emissions either halted or were reduced for reasons “not tied to an economic downturn.”
Emissions stood at 32.3 billion metric tons in 2014, unchanged from the previous year, the IEA said.
Early data is hopeful, the agency said, in that efforts to mitigate climate change may actually be having a greater effect than has been predicted.
The agency named China and the 34 nations of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development as pulling back on increases.
“In China [the country with the most ambitious nuclear power program in the world] 2014 saw greater generation of electricity from renewable sources, such as hydropower, solar and wind and less burning of coal,” the IEA said in a statement.
OECD countries, meanwhile, have made efforts to achieve “more sustainable growth – including greater energy efficiency and more renewable energy.”
"This gives me even more hope that humankind will be able to work together to combat climate change, the most important threat facing us today," said IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol, recently named to take over from Maria van der Hoeven as the next IEA Executive Director.
The IEA said there were three times since records were first tracked in 1974 in which emissions stagnated or dropped. In the early 1980s, in 1992 and in 2009, but all of those were linked to times when the global economy was ion a rut or sliding. “In 2014, however, the global economy expanded by 3 percent,” the IEA said.
While not pointing to nuclear power as a definitive contributor to the 2014 emissions stall — given new plant builds have been in a post-Fukushima Daiichi stall of their own — the IEA says that nuclear power each year represents an avoidance of creating harmful emissions. Since 1971, nuclear power has prevented about two years worth of harmful emissions from being created — a total of 56 gigatonnes.