Fossil CO2 emissions are projected to fall 0.4% in 2026, the Global Carbon Project says

Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are on course to fall slightly this year, according to the Global Carbon Project's annual carbon budget. The 2026 edition, the 21st, was published on November 10 as a preprint in the journal Earth System Science Data. Its team of more than 140 scientists projects 38.2 billion metric tons of fossil CO2 in 2026, a decrease of 0.4% from 2025. A year ago, the same team had projected a 1.1% rise for 2025, to what it called a record high.

The decline is small and uncertain. The preprint gives the central estimate as a 0.40% decrease, with a range from a 1.5% fall to a 0.6% rise. The comparison is also made against a revised baseline: the preprint now puts the 2025 increase at 1.2%, and by our comparison the 38.2 billion metric tons projected for 2026 is slightly above the 38.1 billion metric tons the team projected for 2025 last year.

Its authors stop short of calling a peak. “A drop in emissions in one year is not a peak unless it is driven by structural change,” said Glen Peters of the CICERO Center for International Climate Research. Pierre Friedlingstein of the University of Exeter, who led the study, called the decline encouraging but said that “a reduction driven partly by geopolitical shocks is not a sustainable climate solution.”

Oil falls, coal edges up

Among fuels, only oil and gas are projected to fall. Oil emissions are expected to fall 1.9%, which the release calls “likely a short-term response to the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict.” Natural gas emissions are projected to dip 0.3%, while coal emissions rise 0.6%. International aviation and shipping are each projected to fall 1%. Global energy demand is still growing, the team says, but solar and wind power and electric vehicles are meeting two thirds of the increase.

China, which produces 32% of global fossil emissions, is projected to cut its emissions by 0.9% after two years of low growth, with a strong fall in oil emissions and a 0.3% rise in coal emissions. U.S. emissions are projected to fall 1.3%, mainly because coal emissions, which spiked last year on high natural gas prices and cold weather, are coming down. India's are projected to rise 4.4%, faster than its average of 3.5% a year over the past decade.

Land use and the remaining budget

Emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation, are projected to rise to 5.1 billion metric tons of CO2 this year, driven by peat fires, almost all of them started by people, and by forest degradation in Southeast Asia as drier conditions came with the onset of El Niño. Last year's release had projected 4.1 billion metric tons for 2025. With that rise, total CO2 emissions are projected at 43.3 billion metric tons in 2026, up from 42.8 billion metric tons in 2025.

The team puts the remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels at 150 billion metric tons of CO2, less than four years of emissions at the current rate. Last year's release gave 170 billion metric tons and called the budget “virtually exhausted.” The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is projected to reach 427.7 parts per million in 2026, 54% above the pre-industrial level of around 278 ppm in 1750; the preprint puts the 2025 average at 425.6 ppm.

The land sink has recovered after being severely weakened by the 2023-24 El Niño, the report finds, though the team expects the strong El Niño under way in 2026 to affect it significantly over the coming year. Novel carbon dioxide removal, meaning methods other than conventional ones such as reforestation, cancels out less than 30 minutes' worth of a year's fossil CO2 emissions at current levels, according to the release.

What comes next

A companion paper in Nature Climate Change, led by Corinne Le Quéré of the University of East Anglia, projects that new solar and wind power and electric vehicles will offset 64% to 79% of the emissions from new energy demand through the end of 2028. It counts 59 countries that emitted less in 2025 than in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, while their economies grew.

The carbon budget itself is not yet final. The Earth System Science Data preprint is open for public discussion until December 17, 2026, and is due to appear later as a peer-reviewed paper. Its 2026 figures are projections from preliminary data.