The absolute rate didn't go down, but the proportional rate did. Because our energy consumption has increased.
It's kind of like arguing that there are more pirates today than there were 400 years ago. Yes, technically correct in absolute terms. In fact there's more of everything today. But that doesn't mean we are living in the age of piracy (the naval kind). And it shouldn't mean the current deployment of renewables is making no progress.
dude, we should have gotten to 0 emissions yesterday to prevent global ecological collapse. Any year in which we keep emitting at this rate, it's millions of preventable deaths in the years to come.
What is happening is that any renewable development slightly lowers the price of energy and so energy consumption increases, because there are no meaningful degrowth policies in place. This is a complete failure for the ideology of transition and for humankind as a whole.