July 21, 2021: According to the International Energy Agency, only a tiny chunk of governments’ recovery spending in response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been allocated for cleaning energy measures, according to the International Energy Agency, with the organization forecasting based in Paris that carbon dioxide emissions will reach the record levels in 2023.

Published on Tuesday, the IEA’s analysis noted that the world’s governments had set aside $380 billion roughly for “energy-related sustainable recovery measures.” This represents nearly 2% of recovery spending, it said.

In a statement issued with its analysis, the IEA laid out a stark picture of just how much work needed to be done to meet climate-related targets.

“The total of money, both public and private, being mobilized worldwide by recovery ideas fall well short of what is needed to reach international climate goals,” it said.

These shortfalls were “particularly pronounced to emerge and develop economies, many of which face particular financing challenges,” it added.

The analysis and projections of IEA are based on its Sustainable Recovery Tracker, launched on Tuesday and “monitors government spending allocated to sustainable recoveries.”

The tracker took this information and then might use it to estimate “how much this spending boosts total clean energy investment and to what degree this affects the trajectory of global CO2 emissions.”

Birol said that the governments needed to “increase spending and policy action rapidly to meet the commitments they made in Paris in 2015, that include the vital provision of financing by advanced economies to the growing world.

“But they must then go even further,” he said, “by leading clean energy investment and deployment to much greater heights beyond the recovery period to shift the world onto a pathway to net-zero emissions by 2050, narrow but still achievable if we act now.”

Cutting human-made carbon dioxide emissions to net-zero by 2050 is viewed as crucial when it has to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius target.

The new findings from the IEA come later than it said the planet’s demand for electricity was set for a strong rebound after dropping by approximately 1% in 2020.

Released in the previous week, its Electricity Market Report forecasts that global electricity demand will increase by nearly 5% in 2021 and 4% in the next year, as economies worldwide look to recover from the effects of the pandemic.

The report notes that although electricity generation from renewables “continues to grow strongly,” it can’t keep up with the growing demand.

Renewables were, the intergovernmental organization noted, “expected to be able to serve only half of the projected growth in global demand in 2021 and 2022.”

Energy companies still discover new oil fields, for instance, while fossil fuels play a huge role in electricity production.

Globally, the IEA’s research published in the previous week expects coal-fired electricity generation to rise “by almost 5% in 2021 and a further 3% in 2022, after having declined by 4.6% in 2020.”

“As a result, coal-fired electricity generation is set to exceed pre-pandemic levels in 2021 and reach an all-time high in 2022,” it adds.