More emerging economies increased their use of fossil fuel gases in buildings in 2021. At the same time, global building energy demand increased by around 4% t from 2020 to 2021, to 135 EJ—the largest annual increase in the past 10 years. In addition, CO2 emissions from buildings operations have reached an all-time high of an estimated 10 GtCO2, about a 5% increase from 2020 and 2% higher than the previous peak in 2019. UNEP found that this reflects both the reopening of the global economy and the lack of structural changes to support decarbonization of the building sector during the pandemic. In 2021, the decarbonization level decreased to 8.1 points, from 11.3 in 2020. The Global Buildings Climate Tracker finds that the building sector remains off track to achieve decarbonization by 2050.
