International economic growth did not translate into more harmful greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector last year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said yesterday, a strong indication that growth and increased pollution no longer go hand in hand.
For the second year running, worldwide carbon dioxide emissions stalled last year, while the international economy grew by 3.1 percent, after a 3.4 percent rise in 2014, the IEA said.
A surge in the contribution from renewable energy sources explains the decoupling of growth and carbon dioxide emissions, with clean energy sources accounting for 90 percent of all new electricity generation last year.
Wind alone contributed half of all new electricity generation, the IEA said.
“We now have seen two straight years of greenhouse gas emissions decoupling from economic growth,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a statement. “Coming just a few months after the landmark COP21 agreement in Paris, this is yet another boost to the global fight against climate change.”
There have been four instances of falling carbon dioxide emissions year-on-year in the last four decades, three of which coincided with economic weakness, in contrast to the scenario seen these past two years.
The two largest greenhouse gas emitters, the US and China, both registered declines in carbon dioxide production last year.
However, this was offset by increased emissions in other Asian developing nations, the IEA said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by