A pair of new analyses show how far the U.S. has come in cutting greenhouse gas emissions — and how far it still has to go. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that U.S. energy-related emissions will fall 3 percent for all of 2023. The academic emissions tracker Carbon Monitor shows total U.S. emissions fell 2.5 percent during the first three quarters of the year. The decline comes after two years of flat or increasing output of planet-warming pollution and is one of the largest annual emission drops of the past decade, writes Benjamin Storrow. However, the 3 percent decline means the U.S. needs to catch up in meeting the commitments it made under the Paris Agreement, in which the country pledged to cut emissions by 50 percent of 2005 levels by the decade's end. To meet that goal, the U.S. would have to cut emissions by roughly 6 percent a year through 2030. “We are seeing consistent emission decreases at the scale of the entire country, but not at the pace that we need,” said Chris Field, who leads the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. The largest driver of falling carbon emissions has been plummeting coal demand. Power plants, which account for 90 percent of coal consumption, are on track to burn 384 million tons this year — the lowest level since 1973. Coal use is expected to drop 18 percent in 2023 compared with 2022. Much of the fall in coal consumption has been filled by natural gas, which is up 8 percent over 2022 levels and is expected to rise to 42 percent of electricity production. Wind and solar production, by contrast, has remained essentially flat. “We’re not shifting to zero carbon, we’re shifting to half as much carbon,” said Drew Shindell, a professor of earth sciences at Duke University. “It is not a sustainable thing to shift from coal to gas.” It is unclear if the U.S. will be able to supercharge the renewable energy development needed to reduce carbon emissions. Higher interest rates, supply chain bottlenecks, transmission constraints and lengthy permitting timelines have presented challenges for new projects, particularly wind development. But there is good news. This year’s reductions are largely independent of the Inflation Reduction Act, the 2022 law that provides $369 billion in clean energy spending. The IRA is aimed at alleviating high financing costs, facilitating the adoption of green technologies such as electric vehicles, heat pumps, hydrogen and advanced nuclear.
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