China and India helped push global demand for energy up more than 2 per cent last year, more than twice the rate of growth in 2016, as the global economic recovery took hold.

The higher demand — met primarily by fossil fuels — and a slowdown in improvements to energy efficiency led to rising carbon dioxide emissions.

CO2 levels increased by 1.4 per cent to reach a historic high of 32.5 gigatonnes in 2017, the International Energy Agency said. The growth — an increase of 460m tonnes, equivalent to the emissions of 170m additional cars — comes after three years of flat emissions and contrasts with the sharp reductions needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to Financial Times.

“The significant growth in global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2017 tells us that current efforts to combat climate change are far from sufficient,” said Fatih Birol, IEA executive director.

“We are far from being in line with the climate targets set in Paris,” he added. Under the Paris accord of 2015, countries agreed to limit the rise in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times. A dramatic slowdown in lifting energy efficiency, mainly as a result of weaker policies in the area, was a “worrying trend”, said Mr Birol.

Governments needed to focus on improving the energy efficiency of buildings in particular, he said. The trend of growing emissions was not universal.

The US, the UK, Mexico and Japan all saw a decline, according to the data. The biggest drop was in the US where emissions fell by 0.5 per cent or 25m tonnes to 4,810m tonnes of CO2, marking the third consecutive year of decline.

The US, which is set to withdraw from the Paris accord under President Donald Trump, has seen a marked switch from coal-fired power generation to gas due in large part to the boom in domestic shale gas resources, which has helped to reduce emissions.