Global carbon emissions from coal, oil and gas are projected to fall by 0.4% this year, the first decline in annual fossil-fuel emissions since the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, according to the 2026 Global Carbon Budget report, Live Science reported.
The report was published Nov. 10 in the journal Earth System Science Data and is due to be presented this week at the COP31 climate conference in Antalya, Turkey. Researchers attributed the projected drop to growth in installed wind and solar capacity and to oil-price increases tied to the Iran conflict. The report still finds that the world is likely to miss key climate goals.
"It is an encouraging sign that the growth of emissions is slowing and decarbonisation efforts are starting to make a difference," Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London who was not involved in the research, told Live Science. "However, at 0.4%, the projected decline is very small."
The report projects 38.2 billion metric tons (42.1 billion U.S. tons) of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel sources this year. Forty countries have cut emissions over the past decade while growing their economies, the researchers reported, including the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Japan and about 30 countries in the European Union. Among the largest emitters, annual CO2 emissions are projected to fall by 0.9% in China, 1.3% in the United States, 1.5% in the European Union and 1% in Japan, while India's are projected to grow by 4.4%.
Fossil-fuel CO2 emissions from the rest of the world are projected to decrease by 0.7%, driven mainly by a 1.9% drop in oil emissions. Some of the report's authors suggested in an accompanying paper in Nature Climate Change that the oil decline is a short-term response to supply constraints and higher prices from the Iran conflict, Live Science reported, a reminder that part of this year's dip may not last if prices and supply return to earlier patterns.
The timing is deliberate. COP31 is underway, and governments will be asked again whether current policies are consistent with agreed temperature limits. A first post-pandemic decline in fossil emissions is a milestone, but Rogelj's caution is the other half of the story: a 0.4% dip against more than 38 billion metric tons is a shallow turn, not a transformation.
The report's country-level splits also matter for any claim that the decline is broadly shared. India's projected 4.4% increase sits beside smaller reductions in China, the United States, the European Union and Japan. Whether 2026 becomes the start of a downward trend, or a one-year pause helped by a war-driven oil shock, is the question the next budgets will have to answer.