CO2 Emissions in US Drop to 20-Year Low

[FBaggins]

In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.

...snip...

"There's a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources," said Roger Pielke Jr., a climate expert at the University of Colorado.

In a little-noticed technical report, the U.S. Energy Information Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said this month that total U.S. CO2 emissions for the first four months of this year fell to about 1992 levels. The Associated Press contacted environmental experts, scientists and utility companies and learned that virtually everyone believes the shift could have major long-term implications for U.S. energy policy.

...snip...

Both government and industry experts said the biggest surprise is how quickly the electric industry turned away from coal. In 2005, coal was used to produce about half of all the electricity generated in the U.S. The Energy Information Agency said that fell to 34 percent in March, the lowest level since it began keeping records nearly 40 years ago.



http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ap-impact-co2-emissions-us-drop-20-year-17020857#.UC1RhRpYu5N

[Junkdrawer]

1. Coal to Natural Gas is a good thing - kind of. Kind of like an unfiltered Camel Smoker switching...

to an Ultralight cigarette.


We desperately need to switch to hydo, wind, solar, & geothermal.

[limpyhobbler]

3. I fear it may be misleading people.

There's no evidence that switching to light cigarettes helps people quit smoking. We need to get off nat gas. If it's distracting from the real goal of switching to renewable engery, it isn't helping. If all the industry money and planning spent developing natural gas over the last 10 years had been spent developing wind and solar instead, we would be a lot farther along today. If we were moving full speed ahead with wind and solar, then yeah, one could make the case that natural gas was somehow a transitional fuel. But we are not doing that. Instead we're using our resources for full-speed-ahead arctic oil drilling and tar sands. They are talking about converting vehicles to run on nat gas. We haven't been burning natural gas because it's cleaner than coal. We've been burning it because it's a huge profit center for the industry. It might be a bad distraction from the real goal of switching to renewables.

[Junkdrawer]

4. Thanks. My thoughts exactly.

I keep seeing this 20 reality lag:

Science shows the latest, horrible climate news, politicians and industry start talking about getting serious about applying mild solutions they were given twenty years ago.

If we could only convince Nature to compromise....

[GliderGuider]

2. From the report

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=7350

CO2 emissions during January-March 2012 were low due to a combination of three factors:

• A mild winter that reduced household heating demand and therefore energy use
  
• A decline in coal-fired electricity generation, due largely to historically low natural gas prices
  
• Reduced gasoline demand

So, to deconstruct this a bit, CO2 emissions were down because of climate change (i.e. previous FF use), the continuing and deepening recession, and fracking - to which I will add the offshoring of heavy industry.

Sweet tradeoffs...

In other news, global CO2 production went up 3% last year. Perhaps you shouldn't break your arms patting yourselves on the back just yet.

[hatrack]

5. Plus, gasoline was about $3.65 last time I looked

And we're in the midwest which generally has pretty cheap gasoline. I don't think the annual average has gone below $3.00 this year, which is probably part of the equation as well.