The cap-and-trade advocates will not like this news:
Carbon Emissions See Big Two-Year Drop
By Jad Mouawad
New York Times
October 14, 2009 , 1:24 pm
Earth Policy Institute
Carbon emissions in the United States have dropped dramatically over the last two years.
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Reducing emissions of carbon dioxide may be a little easier than most people think.
ween 2007 and 2009, domestic emissions could drop by 9 percent — a massive decline due in part to the economic downturn, and in part to a new push to improve efficiency and develop renewable fuels — according to the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based advocacy group.
“We’ve been hearing for years that it was nearly impossible to make substantial cuts in carbon emissions,” said Lester R. Brown, the group’s president. “In fact, it is not that difficult.”
Energy usage has dropped rapidly in the past two years in the United States, mostly as a result of the recession, which has crimped economic activity and pushed up unemployment figures. But Mr. Brown said that recent policies are firmly putting the nation on a path of lower carbon emissions, even in the absence of federal legislation.
These include boosting fuel efficiency for cars and trucks, investing in renewable power generation, and an “energy efficiency revolution” that will save power from buildings and appliances.
On a conference call this morning, Mr. Brown pointed out that 22 coal-fired plants in 12 states were being made more efficient, or replaced altogether by wind farms, natural gas plants or wood chip plants. Over 130 geothermal plants are also under development, he pointed out, and 102 wind farms came online in 2008.
Another 49 were completed in the first half of this year and 57 are now under construction, Mr. Brown said.
Amazingly, 300,000 megawatts of wind projects are awaiting access to the grid, which is the equivalent of roughly 300 coal plants.
He also said the American car fleet is expected to shrink by 2 percent this year, a trend that is likely to continue for years.
Adding all of this together means that the goal to reduce emissions by 17 percent or 20 percent by 2020, as Congress is currently debating, should not be too much of a stretch. The trouble, said Mr. Brown, is that 20 percent will not be enough to prevent some of the worst aspects of global warming.
Preventing ice sheets from melting in Greenland or in the Himalayas will require cuts much deeper than those envisaged either by Congress or by negotiators ahead of the global climate summit on Copenhagen later this year, Mr. Brown said.
That would require cutting carbon emissions by more than 80 percent by 2020, and need something like a “wartime mobilization” of the economy, Mr. Brown said.
“What we are hearing is not nearly enough,” he said.
New York Times story link |
