Fossil CO2 emissions set to fall slightly in 2026

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In 2026, total CO₂ emissions are projected to reach 43.3 billion tonnes – up from 42.8 billion tonnes last year. This is shown in the latest report by the Global Carbon Project, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, to which Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) contributed. Global emissions from fossil fuels are set to decrease this year; due to a strong growth in renewable energy as well as the geopolitical situation in Iran. At the same time, emissions from land use are rising, whilst climate change and climate variability are weakening natural carbon sinks. As CO₂ continues to accumulate rapidly in the atmosphere, the dangerous impacts of climate change further intensify. A faster and more sustained expansion of sustainable technologies could lead to a reduction in global emissions within just a few years.

Although global energy demand continues to rise, emissions from fossil fuels are projected to decrease by 0.4 to reach 38.2 billion tonnes in 2026. According to the Global Carbon Project report, this decline is primarily due to a significant reduction in oil consumption (-1.9 %) – likely as a short-term response to the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict. At the same time, sustainable energy sources are meeting a large part of the increased energy demand, as shown by an accompanying study in the journal Nature Climate Change: solar and wind energy, as well as electric vehicles, now meet around two-thirds of the CO₂ emissions resulting from the increased demand. This is will likely amount to 0.5 billion tonnes in 2026, bringing the total accumulated emissions avoided to 4.6 billion tonnes of CO₂.

Global carbon budget could be exhausted in less than four years

However, the report also emphasises that the expansion of sustainable energy sources is not fast enough to permanently reduce global fossil fuel CO₂ emissions. “A decline in fossil CO₂ emissions is encouraging, but a reduction driven partly by geopolitical shocks is not a sustainable climate solution”, says Professor Pierre Friedlingstein of the Global Systems Institute in Exeter, who led the study. “The long-term answer remains the rapid deployment of clean energy technologies. While renewables and electric vehicles are increasingly offsetting growth in energy demand, further acceleration is needed if global emissions are to peak and enter a sustained decline.”

To limit global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, the world’s carbon budget is estimated to be 150 billion tonnes of CO₂. At current emission rates, this budget would be exhausted in less than four years. However, decarbonisation is making significant progress: Between 2016 and 2025, the number of economies that have managed to reduce their CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels whilst simultaneously increasing their economic growth has risen to 40 – almost twice as many as in the previous decade. These 40 countries account for 26 % of current global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels.

Land-use emissions and CO2 removal

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The reason why total emissions rose in 2026 despite lower fossil fuel emissions is an increase in land-use emissions. “In particular, fires in drained peatlands and the degradation of forests in equatorial Asia caused higher emissions. This shows the first signs of the onset of El Niño,” explains Dr. Clemens Schwingshackl of LMU Munich, who coordinates the assessment of land-use emissions.

Afforestation and reforestation removed 2.1 billion tonnes per year from the atmosphere between 2016 and 2025. However, emissions from deforestation were almost twice as high. Innovative CO₂ removal methods, particularly biochar and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, amounted to 2 million tonnes of CO₂ in 2025. “Over the course of a whole year, innovative CO₂ removal methods met just 30 minutes’ worth of global fossil CO2 emissions,” says Professor Julia Pongratz, a geographer at LMU Munich and also a member of the report’s core team. “Rapidly reducing fossil fuel emissions and halting deforestation must remain our top priority. At the same time, we need to expand nature-based and novel CO₂ removal capacities if we want to offset hard-to-avoid residual emissions and achieve greenhouse gas neutrality.”

Natural sinks and the impacts of climate change and climate variability

In addition to emissions from fossil fuels, the report also assesses our planet’s natural CO₂ sinks, such as land and oceans. Over the last ten years, these have sequestered 49 % of anthropogenic emissions. The amount of CO₂ they absorb has remained roughly the same for about a decade, but climate change is having a negative impact on their storage capacity: Over the past decade, the terrestrial CO₂ sink has been 19 % weaker than it would have been without the effects of climate change, whilst the oceanic sink has been around 8 % weaker. Following a significant weakening during the El Niño weather phenomenon of 2023/2024, the storage capacity of the terrestrial sink has recovered. However, the impact of the strong El Niño of 2026 will only become apparent next year.

Professor Judith Hauck, an environmental researcher at the AWI, coordinates the assessment of the ocean’s CO₂ sink: “2026 was a somewhat calmer year for both land and oceans. The effects of the El Niño weather phenomenon on the ocean sink typically become apparent with a delay of several months. We therefore expect the ocean sink to remain largely unchanged compared to the previous year, with the effects of the emerging El Niño becoming apparent in 2027.” In 2025, the ocean sink remained relatively stable and increased only slightly. This is due to natural climate fluctuations and the fact that the rise in atmospheric CO₂ in 2025 was not as great as in the record year of 2024. The researchers calculate the figures for the Global Carbon Project report from measurements of CO₂ concentrations in the surface ocean and simulations using global ocean models. “It is worrying that the number of ocean observations is declining,” says Judith Hauck. “We are now back at the levels seen in the mid-2000s.”

About the Global Carbon Project

The Global Carbon Project is an international research project run by the Future Earth research initiative on global sustainability. An international team of more than 130 climate researchers compiles the report, which is updated annually. This year’s edition will be presented on 10 November 2026 at the 31st UN Climate Change Conference in Antalya, Turkey.

From German-speaking countries, scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (Bremerhaven), ETH Zurich, the Helmholtz Centre Hereon (Geesthacht), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW), Ludwig Maximilian University (Munich), the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (Bremen), the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (Jena), the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the Universities of Bern and Bremen, which contributed to the report through ocean observations, model simulations of the ocean, land and atmosphere, and analyses.

Global Carbon Project report in Earth System Science Data
Accompanying study in Nature Climate Change
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