I graphed the EIA data, shown below. What is most interesting is that this is market driven, not mandate driven.
Amazing Shale: US CO2 Emissions Plummet Towards 1990 Levels
by John Hanger (via The GWPF)
America’s carbon emissions may drop back close to 1990 levels this year. That result would have been thought impossible, even at the end of 2011. But the shale gas revolution makes a reality of many things recently thought impossible. Shale gas production has slashed carbon emissions and saved consumers more than $100 billion per year. Truly astonishing!
For US energy-related carbon emissions, fuel switching to gas is back to the future. After the first quarter, the USA’s 2012 emissions are falling sharply again and may drop to 1990 levels, or just slightly above that important milestone, according to data in EIA’s latest Monthy Energy Review.
America’s energy related carbon emissions fell about 7.5%, during the first three months of 2012 compared to the same period of 2011. And first quarter 2012 emissions are approximately 8.5% lower than emissions in the first quarter of 2010.
Total energy carbon emissions were 5,473 million tons in 2011 and last year fell below the 1996 mark of 5,501 million tons.
The first quarter 2012 reduction of 7.5% makes it possible that this year emissions will fall back essentially to the 1990 level of 5,039 million tons. That is shockingly good news.
The 1990 level of carbon emissions is an important measuring stick, as it is often used as a critical data point for judging progress in reducing a nation’s carbon emissions.
Why are US carbon emissions plummeting back to 1990 levels?
First and foremost are sharp reductions from electric power production, as a result of fuel switching from coal to gas, rising renewable energy production, and increasing efficiency. Yet, the shale gas revolution, and the low-priced gas that it has made a reality, is the key driver of falling carbon emissions, especially in the last 12 months.
As of April, gas tied coal at 32% of the electric power generation market, nearly ending coal’s 100 year reign on top of electricity markets. Let’s remember the speed and extent of gas’s rise and coal’s drop: coal had 52% of the market in 2000 and 48% in 2008.
Apart from power production, reductions of carbon emissions from the transportation sector since 2007 are pushing down US Carbon emissions. First quarter 2012 transportation emissions declined by about 0.6%, compared to the same period in 2011. Rising fuel efficiency and some switching to lower carbon fuels are the main causes of falling transportation emissions.
The bottom line is that America’s carbon emissions may drop back close to 1990 levels this year. That result would have been thought impossible, even at the end of 2011.
But the shale gas revolution makes a reality many things recently thought impossible. It was thought impossible to slash carbon US carbon emissions back to 1990 levels by 2012. It was thought impossible to massively, quickly cut carbon emissions and, at the same time, have lower energy bills.
Shale gas production has slashed carbon emissions and saved consumers more than $100 billion per year. Truly astonishing!
LazyTeenager says:
“Well considering many here were predicting that lower carbon dioxide emissions could only be accomplished by destroying civilization as we know it, it’s amusing to see many were so wrong.”
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Your disconnect is astounding. Have you taken a look around? Our economy is crap, much of this is due to the policies pursued by the enviro nuts and socialists. The U.S. has doubled their foodstamp program in 4 short years. We’ve had people unemployed so long that they’re falling of the tracking, which helped lower the unemployment rate. What the hell? Is this the Green version of success? I’d say our economic doldrums are directly related to our increase of renewable energy production and our lack of ability to move this economy is reflected in the decrease of the use of cheap and reliable energy.
“Sioned Lang says:
July 2, 2012 at 9:28 pm
Great news…no more need to strangle coal or electric companies with taxes, CO2 storage, or anything else…..BTW with this lower emission rate, how many jobs were lost?”
Oh -about 8 million !
That’s the number the great recession has done upon us.
climatereason says:
July 3, 2012 at 2:11 am
The US is not exporting manufacturing to other countries, what we are doing is getting more efficient at it which results in fewer manufacturing jobs.
Tom in Indy says:
July 3, 2012 at 6:14 am
The recession has been over for years!
Employment, GDP and capacity utilization/industrial production have been increasing since Q3 2009.
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If you think having the economy grow at an anemic 1.5% per year is a recovery, then I have a few million people who have given up looking for work who would like to talk with you.
Petrossa says:
July 3, 2012 at 10:04 am
And what was your nations debt again? Let’s put the debts into the calculation and see who is where on the scale.
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Less than most European countries.
So we need more stimulus with borrowed funds in order to get us back to a normal level of CO2 problem for policy spending agenda and UN wealth redistributing purposes? Got it.
Schadenfreude wars with grief over the slowing of the rate of improvement of the atmospheric CO2 resources.
MarkW says:
July 3, 2012 at 11:20 am
The US is not exporting manufacturing to other countries, what we are doing is getting more efficient at it which results in fewer manufacturing jobs.
So all those iPads and iPhones are made in the US? Perhaps in the 58th state?
Jay says:
July 3, 2012 at 10:51 am
“Sioned Lang says:
July 2, 2012 at 9:28 pm
Great news…no more need to strangle coal or electric companies with taxes, CO2 storage, or anything else…..BTW with this lower emission rate, how many jobs were lost?”
Oh -about 8 million !
That’s the number the great recession has done upon us.
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Oh, I’d say more than that. Depends on one’s perspective, I suppose, but today, we have hit a milestone! (Or somewhere around today or last month or next.) The U.S. now has 100 million able bodied people not in the labor force or are unemployed.
Oddly, it seems our increase use of renewables directly correlates with the numbers of people “not in the labor force”.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/good-news-u-s-co2-emissions-are-down-and-a-huge-milestone-passed/
Such a proud day for the warmists! Their cause is accomplishing their goal.
Petrossa says:
July 3, 2012 at 10:04 am
@Dave Wendt says:
“1.The European Union as a group ($32,700 GDP (PPP) per capita in 2010) ranks below America’s poorest state, Mississippi ($32,764).
And what was your nations debt again? Let’s put the debts into the calculation and see who is where on the scale.
Our debt is indeed troubling and during the reign of our current Dear Leader our Debt to GDP ratio has gone from a fairly middle of the road 71.5% to an EU basket case level of 104%. Since in that time we have added nearly $6 Trillion dollars to our debt while generating only $1.3 Trillion in GDP growth, it seems fairly obvious the the wealth redistribution and crony fascism economic model the Ogangster has embraced has been nothing but a very large drag on our productivity.
I would also point out that the main reason that many of our EU and NATO allies have been able to keep their own debt ratios at levels lower than ours is that they have, for several decades now, sublet the majority of their national defense unto the backs of American taxpayers. If you doubt this, I would refer you to the recent history of the NATO operation in Libya. If you go to the archives you will find stories from barely more than a week after the operation began which indicated our stalwart allies, who conned our neophyte leader into joining the effort, were already running out of ordinance to continue to try to maintain the No-Fly Zone. The only thing worse than the constant European snark about U.S. militarism is the wheedling whining they generate when they have a problem which requires a military response and the U. S, is not ready to immediately willing to jump in to pull their collective chestnuts from the fire. Think Boznia, another effort where the U.S. had almost no national interest at stake, but we did have another Democrat President more concerned with his own reputation among the European elites than with those national interests.
The drop probably has more to do with the economy. No jobs=people can’t afford to buy things or manufacture things or go anywhere=falling co2
Richard G said @ur momisugly July 2, 2012 at 8:55 pm
Sugar: useless unless fermented!
Somewhat related.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100168831/monbiot-wrong-again-peak-oil-this-time/
This has bothered me about the Scripps CO2 data. How come it is unaffected by global economic slow downs? It just keeps marching upward. There is no noise in the data and no variation for global economic cycles. Very counter to a data pattern that one would expect if it is the fault of human CO2 emissions. It looks like a bad fake.
John Norris said @ur momisugly July 3, 2012 at 5:05 pm
Apart from a pronounced dip in the Vandal Minimum and the Little Ice Age, there’s no sign of the other Holocene climatic swings in the following chart:
http://www.sturmsoft.com/climate/holocene_co2.gif
All very puzzling.
John Norris says: July 3, 2012 at 5:05 pm
This has bothered me about the Scripps CO2 data. How come it is unaffected by global economic slowdowns? It just keeps marching upward. There is no noise in the data and no variation for global economic cycles. Very counter to a data pattern that one would expect if it is the fault of human CO2 emissions. It looks like a bad fake.
John, I don’t think it’s a fake, BUT you have a point:
I analyzed atmospheric CO2 versus humanmade CO2 emissions a few years ago and could find NO detailed correlation, except that BOTH parameters were generally increasing.
I also analyzed CO2 versus temperature and found that the rate of change dCO2/dt varied contemporaneously with global average temperature, and CO2 lagged temperature by ~9 months.
In a decade or so, we will conclude that atmospheric CO2 is a result of global climate, not a driver thereof.
There is a popular but fallacious argument (called the mass balance argument) that assumes that, everything else being constant (ha!), the magnitude of human CO2 emissions is sufficient that it must be the primary cause of increasing atmospheric CO2. BUT we also can see from the data that human CO2 emissions are generally absorbed by vegetation within a short distance of their source, and furthermore, we also observe from satellite data that global sources of CO2 are located in equatorial areas, NOT industrial areas, and finally, the entire CO2-water cycle is highly dynamic , not static, and increased atmospheric CO2 results in increased global biomass. Human emissions of CO2 are a tiny fraction of natural CO2 flux and are inconsequential within the variation of the natural system.
Shale gas may cause a drop in co2 emissions, but according to this study it will be more than offset by a great increase in atmospheric methane released by fracking. If this study is correct, it looks like using shale gas will be far worse than using oil or coal.
http://www.sustainablefuture.cornell.edu/news/attachments/Howarth-EtAl-2011.pdf
Dave Wendt says:
“ Even relatively wealthy (by European standards) Switzerland would rank #32 as a U.S. state, behind Georgia.
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NUMBER 6 —- Switzerland $ 76,700,000,000 (CREDIT)
NUMBER 192 —-United States $ –599,900,000,000 (DEBT)
Nevertheless, Mark W asserts, without foundation and contrary to the facts, that U.S. debt is “less that most European countries” Financial rank, per CIA:
3 Germany $ 149,300,000,000
6 Switzerland $ 76,700,000,000
8 Netherlands $ 64,100,000,000
9 Norway $ 63,500,000,000
13 Sweden $ 41,600,000,000
19 Denmark $ 22,100,000,000
25 Austria $ 12,000,000,000
27 Luxembourg $ 11,600,000,000
36 Belgium $ 4,700,000,000
The USA is at the bottom of the list:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html
Self-deception: don’t leave home without it.
From pinetree3 on July 3, 2012 at 7:00 pm:
Already debunked months ago. Google found me a nice energy blog with this entry:
EnerGeoPolitics
Abstract of the Cathles commentary:
Basically, the Howarth et al publication is just worst case scenarios, choosing worst case numbers, and anything else that generates an extremely alarming “possible” vision of certain calamity. Which just happens to get conveniently promoted as “what will happen” by the usual anti-fossil fuel climate propagandists.
In the last year I used much less energy heating my home. I am not counting on next winter being so kind. In New England the winter of 1975-76 was kind, but 1976-77 was super cold.
@kadaka (KD Knoebel)
Thanks! I didn’t know about the other study.
Shale gas/fracking is the extremist environmentalist worst enemy. The single carbon atom in CH4 means that more energy is available per carbon atom since here are four hydrogen atoms that react with oxygen to produce heat. Higher atomic weight hydrocarbons, which have higher carbon to hydrogen ratios, produce more CO2 per unit of energy. Thus, changing over to CH4 is the best option to reduce CO2 emissions (if one believes the theory that increasing CO2=global warming).
CH4 is therefore bound to kill off wind turbines and pv’s besides providing cheap enery for the poor of the world and therefore the total global population will not fall to the extremists’ target of one billion people from a present one of 7 billion+.
CO2 emissions is just the excuse for the implementation of a ‘greater good’: The culling of 6 billion human beings.
Really, I’ve been a personal believer for a long time that this debate is just going to settle down when our CO2 emissions have been capped. If that graph is correct, then this has already happened. The FREE MARKET will ultimately get us to renewables, but it will do it slowly and gradually like it SHOULD BE.
People should be rewarded for using renewables and researching more efficient use of them so they take up less space and produce more stable power. This, combined with the free market slowly raising the prices of fossil fuel coal, oil, and natural gas, will be the ultimate blow to our fossil fuel consumption. We are not addicted to fossil fuels. We are addicted to EFFECTIVE energy production and consumption which, for now, is our fossil fuel stockpile.
Even China will cap out in the next couple of decades both with more effective coal burning and fuel efficiency in vehicles.
The fact that the alarmists panic about something that is almost at its peak of usage is unbelievable to me, and I think that with the US capping its CO2 emissions, it’s time for the alarmists to shut up and let the free market do its thing and stop getting its fingers in it. It has nothing to do with policies. It has to do with people adapting due to rising gas prices and such.
Some of USA’s energy consumption decrease is mandate-driven. There is the Energy Independence & Security Act of 2007 mandating a somewhat wide variety of energy efficiency improvements, especially in consumption of electrical energy. Also, Obama shut-down construction of USA’s only long-term nuclear waste disposal facility, and there is a slight bit of gasoline conumption decrease due to “Cash For Clunkers”. And, EPA recently handed-out a regulation that effectively bans new construction of coal-fired electrical power plants.
It’s the economy, stupid.