India is set to witness the steepest yearon-year increase in carbon emission in 2022, followed by the US, said a report released at the climate summit COP27 on Friday.

The 2022 Global Carbon Budget report shows that despite repeated reminders from climate scientists about the need to cut global emissions drastically, overall emission is projected to increase marginally in 2022 over last year.

The carbon budget is a scientific assessment of the global carbon cycle. Relatively few countries account for the majority of the world’s fossil fuel emissions, with China responsible for 32 per cent, the US 14 per cent, the European Union 8 per cent and India 8 per cent.

In India, fossil fuel emissions are expected to increase by nearly 6 per cent, the largest single driver of the growth in carbon dioxide globally.

India recently surpassed the European Union as the world’s third-largest emitter, although its per person emissions are just one-third those of Europe.

The report said that the global atmospheric carbon dioxide level was projected to reach 417.2ppm in 2022, 51 per cent above pre-industrial levels.

“The picture among major emitters is mixed: emissions are projected to fall in China (0.9 per cent) and the EU (0.8 per cent), and increase in the US (1.5 per cent) and India (6 per cent), with a 1.7 per cent rise in the rest of the world combined,” the report said.

The authors of the report concluded that “if current emissions levels persist, there is now a 50 per cent chance that we will exceed global warming of 1.5°C in nine years”.

“Global fossil CO2 emissions are projected to rise 1.0 per cent in 2022 (range 0.1 per cent to 1.9 per cent) led by growth in oil use, reaching 36.6GtCO2,” the report said.

The report further said that “projected 2022 emissions from coal and oil were above their 2021 levels, with oil contributing most to total emissions growth”.

According to the report, the emissions in India are projected to increase by “6.0 per cent (range 3.9 per cent to 8.0 per cent), driven mostly by a 5 per cent increase in coal emissions”.

The report said that the emissions from oil were set to increase sharply, with a projected rise of 10 per cent, and likely to return to the 2019 level, mainly because of the aviation sector making a turnaround after the pandemic-induced slump.

Oil emissions, which make up one-third of global emissions, are projected to rise 2.2 per cent, and dominate the global rise in fossil CO2 emissions.

Emissions from cement, which account for 5 per cent of global emissions, are projected to decrease overall, but set to increase in India.