Harmful emissions of carbon dioxide would fall by 0.6 percent in 2015, breaking its recorded rapid growth in the past decade. A new report from the Global Carbon Project (GCP) shows despite current global economic growth, emissions from fossil fuels worldwide are expected to decrease within the year.

The reduced coal consumption in China has been found to be the major contributor to the projected reduction in carbon emissions. Its emissions growth slowed to 1.2 percent in 2014, which is expected to decline by around 4 percent in 2015.

“The largest uncertainty in future years is China’s coal use,” said Dr Pep Canadell, GCP executive director and co-author of the report. “Stabilisation, or reduction, in China’s coal use might be sustainable since more than half of the growth in the country’s energy consumption came from non-fossil fuel energy sources in 2014 and 2015.”

The report also shows the contribution of Australia to the global carbon emissions. The country covers around 1 percent of the global carbon emissions, emitting 0.38 billion tonnes, making it the 14th largest contributor worldwide.

Australia’s per capita emissions has been stable at high levels, however there has been a strong declining trend over the past six years.

China was the largest emitter globally with 9.7 billion tonnes, followed by the U.S. with 5.6 billion tonnes, the European Union with 3.4, and India, emitting 2.6 billion tonnes. The four largest emitters cover nearly 60 percent of global emissions.

The European Union has the strongest decline in emissions, with an average of 2.4 percent every year in the past decade. However, if India could significantly reduce its emissions, it could potentially match the EU’s emissions before 2020, said lead author Rob Jackson, a professor at Stanford University.

Canadell said that a higher ambition in decoupling economic growth from emissions growth is still needed to avoid the average global temperature increase of 2°C.

“Most scenarios exceed the carbon budget for a 2°C warming target in the first half of this century, which then requires up to several billion tonnes of emissions to be removed from the atmosphere each year during the second half of the century,” he said.

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