From the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis: Economy main factor in US emissions decline
From 2007 to 2013, US carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels decreased by about 11%. This decline was widely attributed to a shift from coal to natural gas in US electricity production. However, a new analysis published in the journal Nature Communications shows that, in fact, the recent economic recession accounts for the majority of the decline.
“Natural gas emits half as much CO2 as coal when used to make electricity,” explains IIASA researcher and University of Maryland professor Laixiang Sun, who conducted the study with colleagues at the University of Maryland. However, he says, “This calculation fails to take into account the release of methane from natural-gas wells and pipelines, which also contributes to climate change.”
In the United States, coal-powered electricity went from 50% to 37% of the generation mix between 2007 and 2012, with the bulk of it replaced by natural gas, in large part due to new hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and underground mapping technologies. Because this shift occurred at the same time as the reduction in emissions, many commentators linked the two.
Yet in addition to the economy, other factors such as population growth and energy efficiency also affect total emissions. Before the new study, nobody had analyzed the various causes of the decline in a quantitative, systematic way.
“If we don’t understand the factors that led to this emissions reduction, we won’t know how to effectively reduce emissions in the future,” says University of Maryland professor Klaus Hubacek, who is also an alumnus of IIASA’s Young Scientists Summer Program.
To tease out the causes of the decline in emissions researchers used a method known as Structural Decomposition Analysis to tease apart the various contributions of six different factors related to energy use and CO2 emissions. Using this method, they were able to determine the relative influence of changes in population, amount and patterns of consumption, production structure, and changes in fuel mix on total emissions of greenhouse gases.
The study found that from 1997 to 2007, a period of rising emissions, 71% of the increase was due to increase in US consumption of goods and services, with the remainder due to population growth. From 2007 to 2009, when emissions declined the most, the study finds that 83% of the decrease was due to economic factors including consumption and production changes, and just 17% of the decline related to changes in the fuel mix. After 2009, emissions declined by only about 1%, and this was due to a mix of all three factors.
Knowing the relative influence of such factors on emissions is important for making effective plans and policies for future climate mitigation, the researchers say. In particular, the researchers say, the study may indicate that further increase in use of natural gas may not have major benefits for the climate. While natural gas can substitute for coal, research also shows that cheap and abundant natural gas can limit the growth of carbon neutral energy sources including solar, wind, and nuclear.
Sun explains, “Sustaining economic growth while also drastically reducing emissions to the levels targeted by the Obama Administration will depend upon large additional decreases in the energy intensity of the U.S. economy, as well as radical decarbonization of the energy sector.”
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Reference
Feng K, Davis SJ, Sun L, Hubacek K. 2015. Drivers of the US CO2 emissions 1997-2013. Nature Communications. doi: 10.1038/NCOMMS8714
Quelle surprise! Nice to see it in print. Good for them.
I’ve never understood how natural gas emits half as much CO2 in electricity production. Does it just have to do with better efficiency of the apparatus?
Nice chart of a society in deflation and industrial decline.
This is no problem at all, simply harm the economy.
The Greeks are doing the best job at CO2 reduction. Let’s plot the countries without labels and do a survey of policy leaders to see which ones they pick to emulate.
Why “carbon” in the first place? A colleague emailed me the following link to a new book. He is acquainted with one of the authors:
http://www.amazon.com/Indisputable-Proof-Dominate-Global-Climate/dp/1511926600/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437500567&sr=1-2&keywords=arthur+lucas
Indisputable Proof: That CO2 Does Not Dominate Global Climate
Two excerpts from the review:
“With complete confidence in the Antarctica, Greenland, deep ocean and other data, we show indisputable evidence that airborne carbon dioxide concentrations has not in the past, does not now dominate our Global Climate and in particular does not dominate Global Surface Air Temperature.”
“Thus, we must accept that we do not understand the mechanisms of our past, present and future Global Climate. But this work does prove that the astronomical forces dominate our global climate and carbon dioxide plays only a small secondary role.”
They should have also plotted the participation in the work force.
“Since the final quarter of 2007, the labor force participation rate has fallen from 65.9 percent to 62.8 percent in the second quarter of 2014, a decline of 3.1 percentage points. In this report, the Council of Economic Advisers estimates that this 3.1 percentage point decline can be attributed to three main sources.”
This despite a growth of population and a huge influx of illegals.
As others have said we need to go the way of Greece and our CO 2 emissions will further decline as expected with the decarburization policy, less employment.
http://www.inquisitr.com/222869/food-stamp-use-increased-by-70-since-2007/
Or we could plot that the use of food stamps increased by 70% since 2007 which is a measure of a failed economy which uses less CO 2
17% reduction in emissions from a changing fuel mix still seems pretty significant to me, as much as the study downplays it. Increased energy use efficiency is also key and should continue. What with natural gas continuing to replace coal and the Democrat/regulatory state seeming to have locked the U.S. into a state of permanent economic malaise, CO2 reduction should be no problem! Assuming that is the goal ….
Yes, but does burning gas cause more, or less, slavery?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/21/pope-links-climate-change-with-human-trafficking-and-urges-un-to-take-lead
CO2 causes slavery !! That’s got to be this years winner.
Interesting. They find the biggest single factor was a change in the energy intensiveness of economic production. As the economy switched to service industries, perhaps?
But I had assumed that an abundance of energy (from fracking) would lead to cheaper energy and so less drive to reduce energy intensiveness. The opposite.
This result is counter-intuitive. Unless the USA has really lost all its industry to China.
Proof that CO2 has no effect on climate is expressed in steps as follows:
1) Atmospheric CO2 has been identified as a possible climate change forcing. Forcings, according to the ‘consensus’ and the IPCC, have units of J s-1 m-2.
2) A thermal forcing (or some function thereof) acting for a time period accumulates energy.
3) If the forcing varies (or not), the energy is determined by the time-integral of the forcing (or function thereof)
4) Energy, in units J m-2, divided by the effective thermal capacitance (J K-1 m-2) equals average global temperature (AGT) change (K).
5) Thus (in consistent units) the time-integral of the atmospheric CO2 level (or some function thereof) times a scale factor must closely equal the average global temperature change.
6) When this is applied to multiple corroborated estimates of paleo CO2 and average global temperature (such as extant examples from past glaciations/interglacials ice cores, and proxy data for the entire Phanerozoic eon), the only thing that consistently works is if the effect of CO2 is negligible and something else is causing the temperature change.
Three estimates of paleo temperatures are shown at these links:
Temperature during the Phanerozoic: http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/idclark/courses/Veizer%20Nature%202001.pdf
Average global temperature and CO2 levels during the entire Phanerozoic eon (about 542 million years) http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html.
CO2 & temp during glacial and interglacial periods of the current ice age: Figure 1 at http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm (Ignore the narrative nonsense at this site. SS has a poor grasp of the relation between mathematics and the physical world.)
For all time, atmospheric CO2 level must have been higher than 150 ppmv or so for life as we know it to exist.
Identification of the two factors that do cause reported climate change (sunspot number is the only independent variable) is at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com (now with 5-year running-average smoothing of measured average global temperature (AGT), the near-perfect explanation of AGT, R^2 = 0.97+ since before 1900).
The ongoing average global temperature trend is down. Monthly reported temperatures are being temporarily propped up by el Nino.
How does one factor in the closing of 58,000 factories in the U.S. since 2000 (when we cheerleaded China into the WTO)? So much of our production is offshore compared to just 20 years ago it’s simply shocking. It’s not an exaggeration to say we’ve scraped out the core of our industrial production in that period of time.
Too bad that this is all based on the fallacy that CO2 is the primary driver of temperature. That is where the economic damage will stem from.
In other words, emissions are down because the economy sucks. Hmmmm, sounds familiar.
In other words natural gas beats renewables (and nuclear) because it’s cheaper. Welcome to capitalism Greenies. It’s how we roll in the Western world!
You wouldn’t be able to sit around in your coffee shops sipping organic soy lattes and plotting the next ‘revolution’ without the comforts that capitalism has given you.
Well the U.K. is slowly waking up to the ‘Glow-bull Warming Scam’
http://www.letsrecycle.com/news/latest-news/defra-told-to-prepare-for-40-budget-cut/
Let me understand: A first world first class technological society, A first world first class educational system. A first world first class healthcare and medical research system. A first world first class military. Supported by a de-indsustrialisng society with a weakening education system, and decreasing taxes from decreasing real wages, Adjustments and sequesters will need to be made.
Sadly I experienced some of these things a long time ago. The society, with much hope, passed through the hands of a mean dictator that made things even worse.
The UN and the EPA have given as a US goal to reduce CO2 emissions in 2050 by 80% relative to year 2005. A year ago I did a rough calculation of what changes in energy sources that might require, assuming no growth in energy demand (an unlikely situation). The US CO2 emission is already down a significant amount (as this article explains). Some CO2 reduction has already occurred in land use practices and energy efficiency. I estimated that total substitution of gas for coal in power production might decrease the US CO2 up to ~28% (relative to 2005). [That is Obama’s promised 26-28% reduction by 2030, moved to 2025.] IF the US were to totally eliminate oil use for transportation and substitute electrical power produced by gas, this could raise total CO2 reduction up to about 40%, or half of the UN & EPA goal. To even come close to an 80% CO2 reduction (which today would require an energy use similar to that of over a century ago), would require the total elimination of all fossil fuel use — coal, oil, and gas.
Emphasizes the difficult role renewables have to achieve an 80% reduction.
This is terrible! This should be the goal of our next president then; to raise our CO2 emission levels back to at least what they were in 2007, and hopefully beyond that. It is not only what is best for America, but for a greening planet as well.
GoCarbon700!
Talk about contradictions in terms. What is our “economic growth” supposed to consist of? Making things by hand? Carving cars out of wood? Returning to a horse-drawn economy?
And I’m really curious about this radical decarbonization of the energy sector he refers to.
Bring on the Great Depression, the one that will make the one in the 1930’s look like boom times.
rgb
Our economy has never really recovered from the Great Recession. Like others have pointed out we have shipped our manufacturing and our pollution to China.
The Carbon bigots tell us this fails to take account of seepage from wells but they fail to take account of the fact that clearly this natural gas would eventually find a way out or it would build up and explode. We know the former is the case as occasionally it does so in spectacular fashion like the fire crater in Russia.
When we collect and burn the gas we are actually reducing emissions not increasing them as we are replacing methane by straight CO2.
Whats funny is that a study is needed to show the obvious; by far the greatest method for reducing emissions is to reduce economic growth and limiting population.
With this study though I wonder when alarmists will start advocating for economic malaise and a carbon tax on all new born babies.
Alx
…..With this study though I wonder when alarmists will start advocating for economic malaise and a carbon tax on all new born babies……
Sorry but you are a bit behind the times I think. They were there years ago.
David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!: “My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
These Eco nuts make Hitler’s idea of genocide look really petty small thinking doesn’t it with an aim of 6.9 Billion to be eliminated.