The first worldwide report (in English) on future emissions of carbon dioxide, also known as “committed emissions,” prepared by Steve J Davis (Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697) and Robert H Soicolow (Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544), published by IOP Publishing (Open Access) and the journal Environmental Research Letters, August 2014. The study shows that despite international efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, total remaining commitments in the global power sector have not declined in a single year since 1950 and are in fact growing rapidly—by an average of 4 percent per year from 2000 to 2012.

By region, the United States is retiring more plants than it’s building and the European Union is unchanged –about the same number of plants are being built as are being retired. But in China, India, Indonesia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, as much as 4 times as many plants are being built as are being retired. To be sure, since 2010 China has slowed construction of coal-fired power plants, however Southeast Asia has been building more to expand industrial output.