Here's a better story from the EU. In 2018, CO2 emissions across the Union decreased by 2.5%, compared to 2017. These are early estimates, but there is every reason to suggest that they are correct. Here's a graph [we all like graphs, don't we?]
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As you can see from the indicators, rising CO2 levels tended to come from the less well developed clean energy infrastructure of the member states, where their growing economies brought an overall rise in their levels. Incidentally, it used to be a kind of indicator that the faster the CO2 levels a country emitted, the better its economy was doing. That one was from pre-nuclear power days, but these things tend to hang around.
Reductions in emissions have come for a variety of reasons from changing energy infrastructures to economies doing less well. A surprising statistic perhaps comes from Germany. For long held in criticism for abandoning new nuclear power, and burning high sulphur content coal in the their power stations, their super fast transition to renewables is making rapid progress. The UK likes to think of itself as the leader in wind technology [and rightly so in several cases], but Germany is making giant strides and is actually the leader in Europe.
A wide ranging report earlier this year showed that
CO2 emissions worldwide rose in 2018 to the highest they've ever been. The biggest contributors were [in order] China, USA and India. To some extent, one can understand why China and India contributed so much. Their energy infrastructures are growing and maturing. China is making huge changes away from traditional power generation to clean power and renewables, but at the same time, coal power stations have been coming online. India is much the same. The USA has largely reversed its policy to achieve a cleaner power generation infrastructure, for the time being.