America’s greenhouse gas emissions fell 1.9 percent in 2023, largely because coal burning to produce electricity fell to its lowest level in half a century, according to estimates published Wednesday by the Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan research firm.
This decline means that US emissions have now fallen by about 17.2% since 2005. There was an abnormally large decline in global warming pollution at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, when large sectors of the economy shut down, followed by a sharp recovery. In the following two years once activity resumes. But over the long term, American emissions have trended down as power plants and cars become cleaner.
However, the decline in emissions so far has not been steep enough to meet the country’s goals to try to slow global warming. President Biden wants to cut America’s greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. To achieve that goal, annual emissions must fall more than three times as quickly for the rest of the decade as they did last year, the report said. is found.
The researchers looked at greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, electricity, industry and buildings, but did not include pollution from agriculture, which accounts for about 10 percent of the country’s greenhouse gases.
To accelerate action on climate change, Congress in 2022 approved a record amount of federal money for low-emission technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear reactors, electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel.
But the full impact of these investments on emissions is not yet clear, as many companies are only just beginning to increase investments in clean energy.
“In the coming years, we expect to begin to see increases in renewable energy deployment and an increase in the number of electric vehicles on the road,” said Ben King, associate director at Rhodium Group and author of the new report. “The big question is how quickly emissions will fall as a result.”
The main reason for last year’s drop in emissions is that carbon dioxide pollution from the U.S. power plant fleet fell by about 8 percent. Electric utilities have closed more than a dozen large power plants that used coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, and replaced them with cheaper, lower-emission natural gas, wind and solar power.
This is a trend that has been underway since the fracking boom of the mid-2000s made natural gas abundant and relatively inexpensive. The report said that while coal plants used to generate nearly half of America’s electricity, they produced only 17 percent last year, a smaller share than nuclear or renewable energy. The use of coal to generate electricity has fallen to its lowest level since 1969.
By contrast, the use of natural gas to generate electricity has risen to record levels, as a series of scorching summer heat waves prompted utilities to run their gas plants more to meet heavy demand for air conditioning. Renewable electricity generation increased by a smaller amount: While the solar industry enjoyed a record year in terms of installations, wind energy companies built far fewer new turbines than they did in 2022.
Transportation, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases, saw a 1.6 percent rise in emissions in 2023. Gasoline and jet fuel consumption increased as Americans continued to drive and travel more after the pandemic. U.S. electric vehicle sales surpassed the 1 million mark in 2023, but they still make up a relatively small portion of vehicles on the road and have yet to make a significant dent in road emissions.
Emissions from the industrial sector increased by about 1.2 percent last year, partly due to methane leakage from drilling operations. The United States produced record amounts of oil and natural gas in 2023, and some of the excess gas that was not sold as fuel was either leaked or intentionally released into the atmosphere as methane. Methane stays in the atmosphere for only ten years before it decomposes, but it is about 80 times as powerful in the short term at trapping heat as carbon dioxide.
The Biden administration has made reducing methane emissions a major priority. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a regulation requiring, for the first time, oil and gas producers to detect and repair methane leaks from hundreds of thousands of existing wells. On Friday, the Energy Department announced a $189 million conditional loan guarantee for LongPath Technologies, which plans to install lasers on giant towers to monitor methane leaks in oil and gas fields across the country.
A study last year found that the United States is one of 26 countries around the world that have seen emissions decline in recent years even as they enjoy significant economic growth. This list also includes Brazil, Britain, Japan, most European Union countries, and South Africa.
But globally, carbon dioxide emissions continued to rise to record levels last year, largely due to increased use of fossil fuels in China, India and other fast-developing countries.