We do know China, the largest emitter, is moving ahead faster than we are, and we know the EU, in third place, is far ahead of us already. We also know CO2 emissions for both the US and EU have already peaked. As I already pointed out in another thread, and is common sense, this has to happen in the rich countries first, because they have the money to try different things out and see what works. That is precisely what is occurring.

So while American emissions may be down from their 2007 peak, that decline appears to be largely the product of the recession rather than being due to the growth of renewable energy. The emissions upturn in 2013 makes it very clear that a 6-year timeline that includes a global recession is too short to establish a trend - at least as anything but an article of faith.

Current trends in wind and solar power tell us nothing about the future of global CO2 emissions.

My position is the same as it has been for the last 5 years: the only thing that would reverse the growth of CO2 emissions in the short to medium term is a deep, ongoing global depression. National policies will not do it (the problem is global, not national), international agreements won't do it (they will either be watered down, ignored or not signed in the first place), and not renewable electricity (renewable electricity will remain an addition to the world's FF use, not a replacement).

you'd have to go back to 1995 to find a year with lower CO2 emissions than 2013. That's not due to having a smaller economy than 1995's, it's due mostly to greater conservation measures: per capita energy use is down because of a combination of better insulated buildings and houses, and more efficient devices, the most obvious being the switch from incandescents to CFLs and LEDs, which has really only begun.
In the future, here in the US, the switch to distributed generation is going to cut significantly into demand for utility produced electricity. Even the financial markets have begun to take notice of this, so you know it's real.
I'll make a bigger post about this, but the overriding dynamic behind any non-passive economy is import replacement. Green tech is the ultimate in import replacement. Once an import replacement cycle starts, it doesn't stop until it runs into some sort of seriously overwhelming obstacle, because the incentive to continue is insanely high. This is what no one, that I can think of, has grasped. Sankowski almost gets it. He's got the facts and figures, but he hasn't quite grasped the overarching dynamic. Import replacement is what China absolutely excels at at the moment, which is why they're growing so fast. I have a feeling the Chinese leadership does actually understand what's going on here with renewable tech; they show every sign of it to me. This is why it will happen at a pace that I believe is going to floor everyone.

Though mostly as a result of switching from coal to natural gas to generate electricity. In 2012 (the year of the report) emissions were 10% less than 2005.

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/ghg/us-ghg-emissions.html

Please see post #4 for my take on the significance of American emissions. According to BP data, American CO2 emissions rebounded by 2.6% in 2013.

Even if all of the electricity generation is renewable and carbon free by 2023:

How does this reverse the melting ice, warmer oceans, acidification, species extinctions, methane release and human activity?

How does this change the group think that continues to support unsustainable levels of consumption that threatens life supporting eco systems?

At this point, in a timely fashion, how do humans engineer the climate to return to the earth system equilibrium realized at 270 ppm atmospheric CO2E?

If our hope is to be invested in human tinkering through invention and a mechanical build out of a renewable clean energy structure allowing for more enterprise, is that hope soon to be as bankrupt as religion, government and economy?

For many of us, doomsday is not a death so rapid and violent as to know we snuffed our own candle, but rather an inability to imagine a return to a sustainable human population living within the earth system we inhabit. Doomsday does not have to be rapid extinction, rather a life not worth living for our childrens childrens children.

Can humans evolve fast enough to find comfort in a 4 – 6 *C warmer world? Paint me a skeptic, even if I must be labeled a doomer.