The growth of global carbon emissions has slowed in recent years, primarily because coal use in China and the United States has fallen since 2011 as a result of broad economic trends, greater energy efficiency and the expansion of renewable energies.

Glen Peters at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research–Oslo and his co-workers developed a way to track progress on emissions pledges made under the 2015 Paris Agreement, using national and global data on energy, emissions and economic trends. They estimate that carbon emissions remained flat in 2016.

Despite the recent slowdown, the authors warn that it will be difficult to limit global warming to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels without large-scale deployment of technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration.

Nature Clim. Change http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3202 (2017)