As the war in Iran raised global oil prices, oil emissions dropped and solar and wind power expanded. 

That led to a slight decrease in global greenhouse gas emissions in 2026. But it’s not a sign that we’ve turned the tide on fossil fuel use, experts warn.

Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels are projected to decrease by 0.4% in 2026, according to a report presented at the COP31 climate talks hosted in Turkey and published in the journal Nature.

That change was driven by a drop in oil emissions, which will be about 1.9% less than the year prior. 

Oil emissions declined as gas and diesel pump prices rose 10% to 50% across the United States, China, and the European Union, compared to 2025, the researchers note. 

But this change in global emissions is “not a sign that emissions have peaked from the transition to cleaner energy,” they write.

In other words, there hasn’t been a global turn away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. 

Instead, this dip was a short-term response to the high oil prices and supply chain snags caused by the Iran war. And that means we have more to do to expand clean energy and stop the surge in plant-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

“A decline in fossil CO2 emissions is encouraging, but a reduction driven partly by geopolitical shocks is not a sustainable climate solution,” Pierre Friedlingstein, director of the Global Carbon Budget Office at the University of Exeter and leader of the study, said in a statement .

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