The Paris climate change treaty celebrated its 10th anniversary this past week

Prime Minister Mark Phillips this past month has commissioned at least three solar farms, generating 3.3 MWs of energy each. The three solar farms are among eight solar farms the Government has or will commission in 2025 in Regions Two, Six and 10. The PPP Government expects to commission solar farms in the next five years that can generate more than 100 MWs of clean renewable energy.
The solar farms are being constructed as part of the Guyana Utility Scale Solar Photovoltaic Program (GUYSOL) financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). This programme is designed to reduce electricity costs, cut greenhouse gas emissions (CO₂ emissions), and improve energy services throughout the country. The eight solar farms installed in 2025 alone would reduce carbon emissions by 32,000 to 40,000 tonnes of CO₂.
These projects are expected to provide electricity to over 25,000 homes, thereby increasing the share of renewables in the national energy mix. According to the Guyana Solar Panel Manufacturing Report, Guyana is poised to witness significant growth in its solar energy capacity, with estimates suggesting that 100 MW of solar PV capacity will be operational by 2030.
The IDB project is separate from the solar farms being installed in the hinterland, which are funded by the LCDS and from funds generated through the sale of carbon credits earned under the REDD+ programme. But the solar farms are just one initiative in reducing fossil-based energy. The gas-to-energy project, which is expected to be commissioned in the first half of 2026, is expected to generate 300 MWs of energy, and Guyana is expected to generate 70 per cent of its energy as clean energy by 2030. With the Amaila hydroelectricity plant set to be commissioned before 2035, Guyana expects to be one of a handful of countries that will generate 100 per cent of its energy as clean energy.
The Paris Agreement was signed on December 12th, 2015. Last Friday, the world quietly observed the 10th anniversary of that monumental agreement. In a study released last Friday in observance of the anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement, it was revealed that most countries are showing signs of reduced carbon emissions, even if the rate of slowdown is anaemic.
Between 2005 and 2015, the decade before the Paris Climate Agreement, global CO₂ emissions averaged an increase of 18.4 per cent annually. From 2015 to now, the annual increase of CO₂ has slowed to just 1.2 per cent. The good news is that the annual CO₂ emissions increase is much smaller than it was in the decade before the Paris Agreement. The bad news is that the CO₂ emissions are still increasing every year. What we need now as a target for the next decade is to have an annual decrease, not an annual increase, of CO₂ emissions.
When, globally, before 2015, CO₂ emissions were increasing at an annual rate of 18.4 per cent, scientists were projecting that the global temperature would increase by 4°C by the end of the 21st century. With the much slower annual increase of emissions, the projection now is that the earth’s temperature will increase by 2.60°C by the end of the 21st century. The problem is that a 2.60°C increase is still far above the Paris Agreement limit of a 1.5 to 20°C increase.
As countries develop, several conditions emerge that favour CO₂ emissions. People and communities in countries that show increased economic growth need more electricity for their homes, business places and factories. Usually that electricity is generated via the increased utilisation of fossil fuel. As people’s living standards improved in countries with increased economic growth, personal and public transportation needs expanded. That means more vehicles, and these are usually gas-guzzlers, emitting more and more CO₂.
It is why, before 2015, there was a positive correlation between a country’s GDP growth and CO₂ emissions. The more a country’s economy grew, as measured by GDP, the more likely it was that its CO₂ emissions increased. But as the world observes the 10th anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement, this positive correlation between GDP growth and increased CO₂ emissions no longer exists. Countries’ GDP increases now no longer necessarily mean that CO₂ emissions also are increasing. The correlation between GDP growth and CO₂ emissions has essentially been decoupled.
Countries representing 92 per cent of the global economy have now decoupled GDP expansion and CO₂ emissions. For advanced economies representing 46 per cent of the global economy, even as GDP growth expands, CO₂ emissions are significantly falling. The UK, Norway and Switzerland have completely decoupled GDP expansion and CO₂ emissions. Other countries that have succeeded in reducing emissions while simultaneously expanding GDP include Brazil, Columbia and Egypt. Other countries that have reduced the rate of annual increases of CO₂ emissions are Australia, the UAE, Italy, Mexico, and South Africa. Countries like the US, Japan, Canada and most countries in the European Union, New Zealand, Latvia, Slovenia, Lithuania, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Togo and Azerbaijan achieved the decoupling between GDP expansion and CO₂ emissions even before 2015.
China is a good-news story when it comes to the decoupling of GDP expansion and CO₂ emissions. In the last decade, China’s GDP expansion has been just over 50 per cent; at the same time, its CO₂ emissions only increased by 24 per cent. It has been able to reduce its annual rate of increase for CO₂ emissions because China has reduced its dependency on fossil fuel and on coal. China is now the biggest emitter of CO₂, even if it is much less per capita than countries in North America and Europe.
Guyana is a trailblazer. It started a programme in 2010 to decouple CO₂ emissions from GDP growth. By 2030, while Guyana’s GDP growth continues steeply upwards, Guyana expects its CO₂ emissions to steeply bend downwards. Guyana hopes to join Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia, Albania, and DR Congo as countries with 100 per cent clean energy. Together with Guyana, Norway, Costa Rica, New Zealand and Uruguay also hope to be countries with 100 per cent clean energy by 2035.