Much like 2023, many climate and energy records are broken in 2024.
It was the hottest year on Earth's record, significantly beating the record set last year. Man-made climate warming pollution and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations have reached new heights. But record deployment of cleantech solutions in 2024 prevented emissions from rising further.
Scientists found that many other signs of life on Earth are also reaching record levels, including ocean acidity, sea level rise, ice caps, heat-related mortality, meat production and loss of forest cover. But they also point out that global levels of deforestation caused directly by human activity are declining in places like the Brazilian Amazon, that fewer organizations are investing in stocks of fossil fuel companies, and that more and more countries are struggling to cope with rising climate-warming emissions. Pricing.
In short, the climate record in 2024 is worrying, but there is some progress on policy solutions. But the U.S. election results narrow the window for possible progress on climate change in the coming years.
2024 is a hot year for climate and clean energy
When the final data comes in, 2024 will easily break the record for Earth's hottest annual average global surface temperature. The record was set in 2023, easily beating the record set in 2016 and equaled in 2020.
The unusually high temperatures in the past two years are mainly due to the long-term global warming trend, coupled with the El Niño phenomenon that attracts warm water to the surface of the Pacific Ocean. But climate scientists are also investigating the role of cloud changes during the past two record-breakingly hot years, and whether reduced pollution from cleaner shipping is affecting cloud formation.
While burning fossil fuels caused record levels of climate pollution at more than 37 billion tonnes, while pushing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to a new high of 422.5 parts per million, these emissions increased by less than 1% compared with the previous year. . This is due to record deployment of clean technologies around the world.
For example, electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrids will account for more than 20% of global new car sales by 2024, up from 18% last year. In China, where half of all new car sales in the past five months were electric, EV adoption is growing rapidly. Deployment of solar panels also continues to set records globally, especially in China, in large part because they have become cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives in most cases.
U.S. Climate Policy Outlook 2025
In the United States, President-elect Trump and a Republican Congress will take office in January. Eight years ago, the same political structure led the United States to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement and roll back more than 100 climate and environmental regulations. Over the next three years, until the pandemic hit, the country's climate pollution rose slightly.
This time, U.S. emissions are falling, helped by financial incentives for clean technologies in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed by Democrats in 2022. continue to be effective. Since the IRA was signed into law, about two-thirds of new and planned clean manufacturing and energy projects and more than three-quarters of investment and jobs have been located in districts represented by Republicans, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan group. .
This is largely because new manufacturing and energy facilities require large tracts of affordable and available land, often in rural areas where residents tend to be more politically conservative. Republican-led states also tend to attract such business investment through generous tax breaks. If the IRA or some of its key provisions were revoked, managers of many new facilities have warned they would have to lay off workers or close stores entirely.
As a result, many congressional Republicans support retaining some provisions of the IRA.
“You have to use a scalpel and not a sledgehammer because there are provisions in there that are helpful overall,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said recently.
An analysis by Princeton University energy modeling experts conducted after the IRA was signed into law also found that potential clean energy deployment and climate pollution reductions could be lost if the U.S. does not build transmission infrastructure fast enough to connect new clean energy sources. About half. As a result, allowing reforms has become a hot topic among climate policy experts seeking to speed up the process. Lawmakers narrowly failed to agree on a bipartisan deal on reforms this year, but talks could resume in 2025.
President-elect Trump has also promised to impose broader tariffs once he takes office. In a bill called the Foreign Pollution Fee Act, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, proposed imposing carbon tariffs on some critical materials imported into the country .
An analysis by the Niskanen Center and the Climate Leadership Council found that products made in the United States tend to produce less climate pollution than products made in many other major countries, including China and Russia. Carbon tariffs would make the price of additional carbon content in imported products higher than the average carbon content of similar domestic products. Not only would this level the playing field for U.S. products to compete with dirtier, cheaper imports, it would also incentivize other countries to decarbonize their industries to avoid paying U.S. carbon tariffs.
Republican policymakers also tend to be open to carbon capture solutions. These include capturing carbon pollutants from chimneys before they enter the atmosphere, or removing them from the atmosphere through technological or natural means. America's aging forests are beginning to absorb less carbon from the atmosphere each year. Forestry or other natural climate solutions could be included in the 2025 Farm Bill, offering some potential for bipartisan climate progress.
A key story to watch as 2025 begins: As the rest of the world rapidly shifts to a green economy driven by clean technology, China may seize the opportunity to bolster its economic and technological development if new U.S. leadership backs off on climate policy. geopolitical ambitions.
Only 28% of U.S. residents regularly hear about climate change in the media, but 77% want to know more. By 2025, you can show Americans more climate news.
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