Emissions in the platinum age: implications of rapid development for climate change mitigation

This paper develops new, illustrative projections for carbon dioxide (from fossil fuels and other sources) and for non-CO2 greenhouse gases. Making adjustments to 2007 World Energy Outlook projections to reflect more fully recent trends, it projects annual emissions by 2030 to be almost double current volumes, 11 per cent higher than in the most pessimistic scenario developed by the IPCC, and at a level reached only in 2050 in the business-as-usual scenario used by the Stern Review.