In energy and climate change: The good, the bad and the ugly
Natural gas isn’t the only reason U.S. carbon emissions are falling
By Brad Plumer, WashPost, Updated: February 15, 2013
It’s become something of a cliché in energy-policy discussions: The United States is making headway on global warming and slashing its carbon-dioxide emissions all because of a glut of cheap natural gas that’s elbowing out dirtier coal power.
But perhaps that natural-gas story is overly simplistic. A notable new analysis by Trevor Houser and Shashank Mohan of the Rhodium Group suggests that America’s budding renewable-energy sector — particularly wind power and biomass — deserves a big chunk of the credit for driving down U.S. emissions. On the flip side, the report also suggests that coal could soon make a comeback.
Houser and Mohan take a novel approach to analyzing the recent drop in carbon pollution. They start by noting that at the end of 2012, U.S. carbon emissions were about 13 percent below 2005 levels. They then tried to tease out the causes of this drop by constructing a counter-factual — what would have happened if energy trends from the 1990s and early 2000s had continued apace?
That led them to this graph, which separates out the causes of the recent decline in emissions. (On the far left is what emissions were projected to be based on 1990-2005 trends. On the far right is what emissions actually were.)
(More here.)
It’s become something of a cliché in energy-policy discussions: The United States is making headway on global warming and slashing its carbon-dioxide emissions all because of a glut of cheap natural gas that’s elbowing out dirtier coal power.
But perhaps that natural-gas story is overly simplistic. A notable new analysis by Trevor Houser and Shashank Mohan of the Rhodium Group suggests that America’s budding renewable-energy sector — particularly wind power and biomass — deserves a big chunk of the credit for driving down U.S. emissions. On the flip side, the report also suggests that coal could soon make a comeback.
Houser and Mohan take a novel approach to analyzing the recent drop in carbon pollution. They start by noting that at the end of 2012, U.S. carbon emissions were about 13 percent below 2005 levels. They then tried to tease out the causes of this drop by constructing a counter-factual — what would have happened if energy trends from the 1990s and early 2000s had continued apace?
That led them to this graph, which separates out the causes of the recent decline in emissions. (On the far left is what emissions were projected to be based on 1990-2005 trends. On the far right is what emissions actually were.)
(More here.)
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