Towards near real-time, monthly fossil CO2 emissions estimates for the European Union with current-year projections

Abstract

With the international goals of the Paris Agreement and the growing number of time-bound national goals for emissions reductions, reliable estimates of CO2 emissions are becoming more and more important. In particular, reducing the time lag of these estimates and producing short-term projections are gaining importance as the remaining time until mitigation deadlines becomes shorter. The Global Carbon Project has been producing a current-year projection of global CO2 emissions since 2012, introducing a sub-projection for the European Union in 2018. The success of this EU projection has been variable, and in this article I explore how the projections in 2019 were made along with some of the reasons why the projections have high uncertainty and bias. About 84% of the total error in the projection of EU emissions in 2019 was because of a poor projection for coal consumption, which was a result of poor estimates of sub-annual observations, a misunderstanding of conflicting information, and poor assumptions applied to the remainder of the year. The correction of the errors identified here will go some way to improving future short-term projections of the European Union's CO2 emissions, paving the way for a low-maintenance, operational system.