The EU Legal Frameworks - The Sustainability of Renewable Energy in Europe - page 16

During the period 1990-2007, the European Commission has registered a reduc-
tion of emissions, 7 % in the energy sector, 11 % in the industrial process, 11 % in
agriculture (reduced use of fertilizers), and 39 % in the waste sector.
The results of the EU should be interpreted not only in the light of Kyoto and
subsequent agreements. The emission reductions are also attributed to two factors:
the global economic and financial crisis which has reduced industrial production,
and the new member states that joined the EU which have reduced the average level
of emissions because of their lower economic productivity compared to the old
member states.

1.4 Trends in Global CO 2 Emissions

All the agreements made so far on energy and the environment at global and Euro-
pean level have led today to a certain level of CO 2 .
During the last decades, the massive use of fossil fuels and related polluting
emissions has made the environmental situation very difficult. The relationship be-
tween temperature and CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere has long been an object
of study, but today it is confirmed by observation of the long-term cycles. So, the
relationship between temperature rise and CO 2 emissions has always been a direct
relationship. The difference from the past is that currently the amount of CO 2 in the
atmosphere is growing exponentially, as it is shown in Fig. 1.1 .
In 2013, the CO 2 concentration has reached almost 400 ppm. During the last
glaciations, the concentration of CO 2 in the atmosphere was equal to 180 ppm; in
1800 (preindustrial), it was 280 ppm, and now it has reached 400 ppm. A concen-
tration of 500 ppm is considered by scientists to be a point of no return, where the
Earth will stabilize at a new hotter equilibrium. Since 1975, the CO 2 concentration
in the atmosphere has increased from about 330 to 400 ppm due to the growing use
of fossil fuels (Fig. 1.3 ). The CO 2 remains in the atmosphere for a very long time
and the emissions from any place combine in the whole atmosphere in the period
of about 1 year.
Regarding the recent global trend, average monthly global concentration of
CO 2 in the atmosphere in 2013 stood at 366.7 ppm, against 393.8 ppm in 2012.
Since 2010, the average monthly increases: the atmospheric CO 2 concentration was
389.7 ppm, that is, 7 ppm less than at present.
As the source of more than two thirds of global GHG emissions, the energy sec-
tor is crucial to tackling climate change. The growth in primary energy consump-
tion provided by the International Energy Agency (IEA 2014a ) in the World Energy
Outlook 2014 (WEO-2014) is shown in Table 1.2 for the period 1990-2040.
Data refer to “New Policy Scenario” (the central scenario in WEO-2014) that
explores the evolution of energy markets on the basis of the continuation of existing
policies and those implemented until mid-2014.
In particular, the WEO-2014 forecasts the following issues between 2012 and
2040: