New EIA data shows USA inadvertently meets 1997 Kyoto protocol CO2 emission reductions without ever signing on thanks to a stagnant economy. Lowest level of CO2 emissions since 1994.
In 2012, a surprising twist and without ever ratifying it, the United States became the first major industrialized nation in the world to meet the United Nation’s original Kyoto Protocol 2012 target for CO2 reductions.
WUWT readers may recall that Kyoto was an international agreement proposed in December 1997 requiring nations (according to the U.N. press release then) to reduce CO2 emissions by 5.2% by 2012. It became international law when ratified by Russia in November 2004. The United States never ratified Kyoto and is not legally bound by it, even though then vice president Al Gore signed it much to the annoyance of many.
It expired on December 31st, 2012, with no replacement agreement to follow it.
Well, it seems like killing the economy went hand in hand with CO2 reductions, imagine that. The graph below is from EIA with my annotations.
From the EIA report:
Energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2012 were the lowest in the United States since 1994, at 5.3 billion metric tons of CO2 (see figure above). With the exception of 2010, emissions have declined every year since 2007.
The largest drop in emissions in 2012 came from coal, which is used almost exclusively for electricity generation (see figure below). During 2012, particularly in the spring and early summer, low natural gas prices led to competition between natural gas- and coal-fired electric power generators. Lower natural gas prices resulted in reduced levels of coal generation, and increased natural gas generation—a less carbon-intensive fuel for power generation, which shifted power generation from the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel (coal) to the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel (natural gas).
Other factors contributing to the lower emissions include decreased demand for transportation fuels and mild winter temperatures that reduced demand for heating. The warm winter months during 2012 (particularly in the first quarter) more than offset a slight increase in cooling degree days during the summer months. EIA recently published preliminary data for January-December 2012 in the March 2013 edition of the Monthly Energy Review, which includes statistics covering all aspects of energy. EIA will publish a full analysis of 2012 energy-related CO2 emissions later this year.
Source: http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=10691
CSV data available here: http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/chartdata/US_annual_carbon_emissions.csv
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AZLeader (who provided this tip) writes:
Kyoto is the bedrock of international law that serves as the legal foundation used by all nations for their individual actions taken to reduce global CO2 emissions. The United States, the lone non-signatory, is now the only major polluter to have met the standard.
Today the EIA simply reports that U.S. CO2 emissions in 2012 were the lowest since 1994. Though amazing in itself, it is not headline news. Meeting the Kyoto Protocol standard should be front page news.
U.S. Meets Kyoto Protocol Standard
The downloaded data shows that U.S. total CO2 emissions for coal, oil and natural gas were 5,584 (million) metric tons in 1997.
It also shows that U.S. CO2 emissions rose to 6,023 (million) metric tons of CO2 in 2007 before they began to fall.
In 2012, U.S. CO2 emissions fell to 5,293 (million) metric tons. That is 291 (million) metric tons less than they were in 1997 and 730 (million) metric tons less than their 2007 peak.
Drum roll please…
291 (million) metric tons below 1997 levels is a 5.2% reduction in CO2 emissions. It EXACTLY meets the Kyoto requirement!
Meanwhile, world CO2 emissions haven’t slowed, clearly the USA isn’t the problem.
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Thanks dbstealey
China’s 45% CO2 increase swamped the US’s 3% decline. Freeman Dyson notes the benefits of rising CO2 is an important issue to evaluate.
A much greater challenge than anthropogenic global warming, are the consequences of declining oil exports. See Gail Tverberg
Our Energy Predicament in Charts
How Resource Limits Lead to Financial Collapse
How Oil Exporters Reach Financial Collapse
Does this mean that the US is owed reparations from Maldives?
In fact, the US has done so well in reducing CO2 emissions while NOT being a signatory, that Canada decided to opt out as well! /sarc
Not sure where Canada’s emissions are these days though. Despite the federal government pulling out of the treaty obligations, some provinces have gone for it big time. Stupidly large amounts of money are being paid by electricity consumers in Ontario for boondoggle renewable schemes and BC instituted a scam of a Carbon tax (check out Donna Laframboise’s coverage of the auditors report here http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/04/02/auditor-general-slams-carbon-offset-system/ – WOW). I am sure the CO2 emissions figures are out there somewhere which show how “successful” they have been…..
We obviously need more fracking and all-out nuclear war against India and China to stop them from building their evil coal-fired power plants.
JDN : Regarding why replacing coal with natural gas reduces CO2.
Natural gas is composed of short chain hydrocarbons (methane, ethane, butane). Coal is composed of long chains of “organic” carbon compounds. Proportionally more carbon vs hydrogen is burned using coal. Carbon vs Hydrogen in Methane is 1 to 4, in coal it’s about 1 to 1 (or less). Of course, coal has higher energy density and is safer and easier to store. Of course, burning natural gas yields more of that most significant GHG, dihydrogen monoxide.
Major development in UK MSM reporting. Geoffrey Lean is alarmist environmental journo in the Telgraph newspaper. He seems to have had an epiphany! If you have been following him for years you’ll realise the significance of this. See bishop hill also.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/9974397/Global-warming-time-to-rein-back-on-doom-and-gloom.html
Meanwhile, Mother Gaia, who is NOT a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, has emitted 90,000 metric tons (sic) of CO2 into the atmosphere without a care in the world.
p.s. Leif will fix my basic scientific illiteracy
Further Down the press release it states specific targets by individual countries to attain the 5.2% decrease. The US target was 7% according to the press release.
“The 5.2% reduction in total developed country emissions will be realized through national reductions of 8% by Switzerland, many Central and East European states, and the European Union (the EU will achieve its target by distributing differing reduction rates to its member states); 7% by the US; and 6% by Canada, Hungary, Japan, and Poland. Russia, New Zealand, and Ukraine are to stabilize their emissions, while Norway may increase emissions by up to 1%, Australia by up to 8%, and Iceland 10%.”
Not news to me — I lived in Europe for much of the Bush presidency, and used to tweak my friends there whenever they complained about Bush “not signing Kyoto”. According to the US figures I could find all through that time, the USA growth in CO2 output essentially stopped in 2000, and it was certainly no greater when the 2008 crash hit than it was in 2001. Western European countries, however, had ever-increasing energy use — and the only reason they could plausibly claim to have a chance of meeting Kyoto commitments was because they had gamed the 1990 target by placing it conveniently AFTER the full implementation of the US Clean Air Act but Before the “Dash for Gas” and fall of the iron curtain in Europe.
The reason that burning natural gas delivers less of the necessary plant nutrient carbon dioxide than burning coal is that the hydrogen in the natural gas also gets burned, which produces the vital chemical called water.
The lower heat of combustion (he higher heat of combustion uses the latent heat in the produces water which is of no value in a boiler) of 21,500 Btu/lb for methane and 14,108 Btu/lb of carbon (which is the majority of the useful part of anthracite coal). However 1 lb of methane only has only .749 lb of carbon so we get 28,717 Btu/lb carbon when burning methane. Of course natural gas is seldom pure methane, but the other constituents that contain carbon also contain hydrogen so they retain a considerable advantage over coal unless you are actually trying to assist the growth of food crops by providing them with carbon dioxide.
Since all petroleum products will contain hydrogen, this would even include the byproducts that Canada will get from their cleaning up the mess that mother nature made and is referred to as tar sands.
Let me add that from 2010 to 2011 only the USA and Germany reduced CO2 emissions out of all Kyoto participants and all developed countries. all countries. From 2011 to 2012 the USA saw another reduction in CO2 emissions while Germany increased emissions by 3.2%. The USA still did better than most Kyoto participants and in the end participating in Kyoto was meaningless.
Maybe this is why global warming stopped?
It is a result of changes in economic decision making, these changes have been ongoing in the power generation fields for a long time as upgrades are incorporated when available during periodic maintenance, that have resulted in the increased efficiency of operation.
Most of the coal fired technology, I have spent the past 10 years making parts for while on my CNC Milling machine job, for Alstrom Power Preheater have been dual gas/powdered coal burners, that can be adjusted from 100% NG to 100% powdered coal, starts with Natural gas to preheat boiler then adds in additional powdered coal to a set blend based on supply/price and on hand availability at the time. The combination of fuels can be adjusted on the fly, for optimal power/price/CO2 output as required.
The rest of the output from the shop was mostly retro fitting older units to the newer powdered coal blower technology, with heat exchangers recapturing most of the post boiler exhaust heat back into the input to combustion side, raising efficiency. Centrifugal particle separators before final filtering that lowers the filter load greatly, were a common item we made, as well as water spray cleaning of output process gasses from other commercial material processing equipment, intricate huge pieces of total Stainless steel and inconiel art work that lasts a long time.
The job I had before that was recycling tires by shredding then into chunks the land filling them, they converted over to the process of chopping the tires into golf ball sized chunks and mixed with coal (about 10%-15% tires to coal ratio) for co-burning them in older style coal fluidized bed type boilers. output is ash, CO2 water and drops of melted iron from the wire in the tires, sorted out magnetically and sent to refineries for making more iron again.
Won’t change the coming carbon taxes. CO2 is a linear-threat, no-threshold item: no eco-green will say cutting back X amount is “enough”. And the feds need more money.
Meet Kyoto twice over and this nonsens will still be going on. The EPA didn’t shrink its offices (and powers) after getting rid of the terrible 60s air pollution, did it?
US CO2 emissions will probably go down further after the next economic crash, that Obama is setting you up for right now. It seems that one sub-prime housing crisis was not enough for him:
The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with bad credit, an effort that officials say will help “power the economic recovery” (LOL) but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/obama-administration-pushes-banks-to-make-home-loans-to-people-with-weaker-credit/2013/04/02/a8b4370c-9aef-11e2-a941-a19bce7af755_story.html
Maybe you should consider charging your president with malfeasance.
John Parsons AKA atarsinc
Magus says:
April 5, 2013 at 1:36 pm
“Wonder how much press this will get (my guess is none)”
Your guess is wrong. At least 68 news outlets have picked up the story so far. JP
I’ve often wondered if the Kyoto protocols were, to some extent, meant to handicap the growth of developing nations like China, india, Brazil etc., to allow the industrialized leaders to maintain their lead.. If so, and since China, etc., did not go along with it and subsequently are looking to take over the lead, some part of the reason for the AGW meme in the first instance is being neutralized.
Dang!
I have to admit, I haven’t been doing my part to increase CO2 output this last winter. The + 4 cords of white oak firewood that I cut and split 2 years ago burns much slower and uniformly than the typical fir, alder, cedar, and big leaf maple that is the usual firewood fare here in The Great North Wet. It does take 2 years to get the dang white oak to dry sufficiently, given our relatively short and cool drying season though. But it is wonderful, only stoking the stove half as often and having that much more uniform heat available, when you come in from another cold, wet winter day!
My apologies for being a CO2 slacker…. I’ll try to do better,
MtK
The sad truth is that CO2 never made a difference. Self righteous zealots cannot take the data and must protest loudly.
John Parsons AKA atarsinc
Jimbo says:
April 5, 2013 at 1:55 pm
“A low carbon economy is a third world economy.”
Top Three Greenest countries
1 Switzerland 95.5
2 Sweden 93.1
3 Norway 93.1
Fail. JP
Plus we are ever more energy efficient. Quietly, smartly, apolitically …
The 2010 spike was not durable. But the downward slide is
You can twist it anyway you want, the economy sucks.
Government policy indecision is the cause.
The private sector will find a path, it just needs a map showing where the roadblocks have been placed (that includes the duration of the impact, along with any route changes that might blow in with the wind).
Then, they can start to plan.
Oops, the grand-children have pre-approved all benefit plans, funded or not.
u.k.(us),
Excellent comment. Agree wholeheartedly.
• • •
atarsinc:
Those countries are far from being “low carbon”. You want ‘low carbon’? See here.
Not that world CO2 output matters much, but it would be fun to put a chart showing China’s CO2 increase on top of our reduction.