Here's an estimate of US carbon emissions through 2023:
Are we meeting our goals? It doesn't look like it. If you take out the pandemic year of 2020, we've been consistently above target by about 10% since 2018.
19 thoughts on “Raw data: Carbon emissions in the US”
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Of course we're missing our targets. Climate scientists expect the Earth to increase by nearly +3.0C by the end of the century. It's time we got off this fantasy that we'll overshoot Paris' 1.5C; we're going to blow past it and it'll cost trillions globally in mitigation.
There's nowhere enough courage like there was in 2009 when Democrats sacrificed power to pass the ACA. And then, there are all the self-delusional cryptocurrency folks who insist crypto will save the world and by golly they're going to spend money to defeat Democrats because crypto is more important. Fuck them.
I remain convinced that these ideas about managing climate change are just fantasies... way too little and way too late. We simply cannot have the standard of living we have today and world population is way too high. As you can see from the wars being waged all over the world, there is little reason to think cooperation and technology will make a difference. Half the voting public in the US are poised to install the fanatical trump and an autocratic government. This will essentially end all attempts to manage emissions. So that's it. It's already over.
I think you're essentially right. There are effectively zero Americans who will willingly give up any of their comforts, conveniences, privilege, and indulgences, which together pretty much constitute the American way of life. More importantly, emerging third world societies (or at least the power structures thereof) are not going to accept being told they can't have something like first world privileges, and human population expansion worldwide (massive in Africa, the poorest sector) is exactly in those areas of greatest disparity between current standards of living and first world standards. And who's going to bring Putin's Russia into the carbon reduction fold? India? Putin has shown considerable ability to ratfuck whatever systems he wants, and has created binding ties to much of the third world - how does this play out in terms of emissions reduction? The oil majors have not only not met their commitments to reduced extraction and exploration, they've massively increased both, which makes Exxon's CEO's statements of pumping every drop out of the ground the only words that matter. In the US our only hope is for Trump to take the Republican Party down with him and give us a decade of Democratic rule, which would lead to serious reductions in our emissions, and China is positioning itself in a big way to transfer away from coal, so the big two emitters could conceivably show significant reductions over the next ten to twenty years but that's nowhere near guaranteed. Regardless, global carbon emissions are increasing at an increasingly accelerated rate and show zero signs of slowing, and given the inertial realities of global economic, political, and social systems, ALL of which must undergo radical change if we expect to have any chance whatsoever, outside of some kind of massive external forcing (pandemic, climate collapse....) there is no realistic way we avoid some kind of very bad outcome. The evidence is overwhelmingly against it.
Emission reductions are only one part of the picture. Environmental degradation is altering (destroying) planetary systems, ALL of them. The Amazon is disappearing, and outside of international intervention there's no rational way to see how this stops. In fact, it may have already passed permanent critical tipping points towards savanna, with a fraction of its former carbon capacity, and rainforests globally are in free fall, not just in lost acreage but in resiliency of what's left. The tundra worldwide is melting at an "alarming" rate, with the potential for massive releases of methane and CO2 and, apparently, much larger current releases than previously thought. The AMOC and Antarctic circumpolar ocean circulation have slowed significantly and show signs of collapse, possibly in the near future, which means tropical and sub-tropical ocean waters will no longer be cooled by polar circulation. Greenland's ice is melting at an increasing rate that, of course, far exceeds expectations, and one thing you can take to the bank is when the ice goes it's game over. The continental shelves are being raked into undersea deserts by bottom trawling, with unpredicted (but hardly surprising) increases in carbon release. Boreal forests across the North American and Russian taiga are burning at rates hard to wrap your head around, releasing massive amounts of carbon and ash, which lands on ice sheets and greatly increases their malt rate. Ocean temperatures the past two years have been literally off the charts hot, and to think this is some kind of temporary anomaly is dissociative - it is a marker of qualitative state change in planetary systems. And this is just a sampler - coral reefs in steep decline, massive non-tropical forest loss, 75% of soil degraded globally (far more carbon is stored under soils than over them), and let's not go into the catastrophic effects of human activity on all other faunal species.
Keeping temps under 1.5 is a delusional fantasy. We're functionally already there. We've pushed the system to its limit, and we're still pushing and will not stop. The planet is sending clear signals that it has reached and is reaching the limits of what it can absorb. Dystopian predictions are almost guaranteed to be in some way wrong, there are just too many variables, so how this turns out can only be predicted in the broadest sense but the evidence again is overwhelming, especially the evidence of how humans as a species actually behave, and have behaved for millennia. We're in for a very rough ride, whatever path(s) we take, and honestly if that's what it takes for the species to 'learn' how to live within the limits of planetary ecologies, then so be it.
It isn't necessary for anyone (other than a few owners of oil wells) to give up their comforts. Wind and Solar are now cheaper than coal. People aren't going to give up their comforts to pay extra for fossil fuels.
Much of the energy transition is actually about giving people greater comforts:
* cleaner air (fewer particulates, less smog).
* electric cars have an oomph factor that makes them more fun to drive than ICEs.
* a couple of batteries on the side of the house improves electric reliability.
etc.
That’s a lot of detail and I agree.
It's an exponential curve. The technical solution is just now leaving infancy and starting to make an impact.
The trend line is going down, so that's something. (Especially since our population keeps increasing.) Just because we haven't achieved some arbitrary goal doesn't mean there hasn't been some success. I think there needs to be some major technological advancements to realistically surpass the Paris Agreement goals.
Solar power and storage, plus wind power, have pushed fossil fuels out of the electricity market. Old plants will keep running for a bit longer. Alas, we're also producing more fossil fuels than ever.
No major new technological break through is needed. Granted, better batteries for storage would be good. Upgrades to our grid will help a lot. Also, more efficient cars need to replace SUV's and trucks--but can we get people to switch?
I'm surprised a bit that our emissions are on a downwards trajectory. That's good news,
I agree major technological advancements aren't necessarily needed to make some really good gains in the short term. (Sloppy wording on my part in my original comment.) I'm thinking mainly with EVs. I'm no expert in this field but if there can be advances that make them truly realistic alternatives for most people (in terms of convenience, utility, and affordability) that will be a big win.
As far as "major technological advancements' that I mentioned, I was thinking more over the horizon types of advancement (e.g. scrubbing the the air of carbon, or some such technology).
You can lease a Kia Niro EV with a 250-mile range for 250/month. You can charge it at work if you don't have a garage (often for free), or in your garage (about 23 miles per dollar in cost), or at a public fast-charging station (typically while eating or watching a movie).
Electricity from coal has dropped 906,445 Thousand Megawatthours from 2014-2023. Electricity from Natural Gas has increased by 675,427 Thousand Megawatthours during that same period. CO2 emissions from coal is about 2,250 lbs/MWh while natural gas is more like 1,075 lbs/MWh. So the change from Natural Gas to Coal has had a larger reduction on CO2 emissions by about 50% than the reduction of coal by renewables has.
We can continue this downward trend for 6-7 more years, but then the hard part starts. That is when all coal is closed.
What do you mean by "all coal is closed"?
The annual amount of electricity generated by coal has decreased from 1,581,710 in 2014 to 675,264 (thousand Megawatthours) in 2023. If that downward trend continues, it will take 6-7 years before coal is a negligible amount of the electricity that the US generates.
Some of that generation will be from new natural gas and some will be from other sources. Once coal has fallen (all closed) to a negligible (or zero) amount, then the hard part of emissions reduction begins.
Got it. Thanks for the clarification.
"Solar power and storage, plus wind power, have pushed fossil fuels out of the electricity market."
Natural Gas produced more electricity than all renewables combined in 2023. The amount of electricity generated by Natural Gas has increased 675,427 thousand megawatthours from 2014 - 2023. Non-Hydro renewables have increased 374,450 thousand megawatthours over the same period.
So your statement is factually inaccurate.
The site mentioned, the Rhodium Group, is more optimistic:
"With all federal and state policies on the books as of June 2024, we estimate the US is on track to reduce its GHG emissions by 38-56% below 2005 levels in 2035, representing at least a doubling—and potentially as much as a four-times increase—from the pace of annual emissions abatement from 2005 to 2023"
Progress really is being made. Peak worldwide emissions will happen this decade now that China is really working on it, and may even have already happened.
We did the easy stuff.
Now comes the hard stuff.
There is no country in the world who is meeting their goals. And in Germany, they're actively going backwards by replacing nuclear with gas.
Have I told you how pessimistic I am about the future of human civilization? Just yesterday I read an article by left wing pollster Ruy Texeira advocating that we forget about climate change and pursue energy abundance. Basically, drill baby drill.
I'm surprised it is as "close" as it is. (It isn't close; I just expected much wider divergence.)
I think it is pretty clear what happens: a little, not enough. More hurricanes take out more states, more people in Arizona die of heat, and so on.
Nothing much will happen until a threshold fraction of homes can't get insurance, and so mortgages stop working.
Then people will panic and start asking why nobody warned them.