WASHINGTON – America’s greenhouse gas emissions from energy and industry fell by more than ten percent in 2020, reaching its lowest levels in at least three decades as the coronavirus pandemic slows the country’s economy, according to an estimate by the Rhodium Group has been published.
However, the sharp drop was the result of extraordinary circumstances and experts warned that the country still faces enormous challenges in getting its planetary warming pollution under control. In the coming years, U.S. emissions are widely expected to bounce as soon as the pandemic recedes and the economy comes back to life unless policymakers take stronger action to clean up the country’s power plants, factories, cars and trucks.
“The main reduction last year was around transportation, which is still very dependent on fossil fuels,” said Kate Larsen, a director of Rhodium Group, a research and consulting firm. “But as vaccines become more prevalent, and depending on how fast people feel comfortable enough to drive and fly again, we will expect emissions to recover, unless major policy changes are made.”
Before the pandemic, U.S. emissions have been declining slowly but steadily since 2005, largely because coal-fired electricity services, the dirtiest fossil fuel, have shifted in favor of cheaper and cleaner natural gas, wind and solar power. Over the past decade, utilities have retired hundreds of coal-fired power plants, despite President Trump’s efforts to revive the industry.
Then came the coronavirus. As governors put their states under lockdown last year and sheltered Americans, emissions fell in parts of the economy that rarely saw sustained drops before.
Transport, the country’s largest source of greenhouse gases, saw a 14.7 percent reduction in emissions in 2020, while millions of people stopped driving to work and canceled flights. While travel began to increase again in the latter half of the year, while states relaxed their locks, Americans drove 15 percent fewer miles last year than in 2019, and demand for jet fuel fell by more than one-third.
Emissions from heavy industry, such as steel and cement, fell by 7 percent in 2020 as carmakers and other manufacturers made fewer goods disappear amid the economic downturn. America’s buildings, which produce carbon dioxide when they burn oil or natural gas for heat, saw emissions fall by 6.2 percent, driven by both closures and warmer than average weather.
In the electricity sector, emissions fell by 10.3 percent in 2020, driven by a sharp decline in coal burning. As the demand for electricity has dropped nationwide, utilities have run their coal plants much less frequently because coal has become the most expensive fuel in many parts of the country. Instead, they used more natural gas – which produces less carbon dioxide than coal but still generates significant heat-trapping methane – and relied more heavily on emissions of wind and solar power.
Renewable energy rose in 2020 as energy companies overcame the pandemic disruptions to build a record number of new wind turbines and solar panels ahead of a key deadline to claim a federal tax credit. The United States last year produced about as much electricity from renewable sources as from coal, a milestone that has never been reached before.
Overall, the drop in emissions nationwide was the largest one-year drop since at least World War II, the Rhodium group said, placing the United States within one of its key climate goals under the Paris Agreement. , a global treaty. by nearly 200 governments to address climate change.
As part of the agreement, former President Barack Obama promised that by 2020 United States emissions would fall 17 percent below 2005. President Trump rejected the Paris Treaty, and before last year, it looked like the United States would miss the target. But in the wake of the pandemic, America’s industrial emissions are now about 21.5 percent below 2005 levels.
But this milestone has several caveats. First, there is no increase in emissions due to wildfires in the West last year that burned millions of acres of forests and grasslands, leaving the carbon dioxide in all the trees in the atmosphere trapped.
One preliminary estimate in BloombergNEF in November suggested that wildfires could offset about three percent of last year’s drop in U.S. energy and industrial emissions. While many trees that have gone up in flames will eventually grow back and absorb carbon dioxide as they do, the process will take years. And scientists have warned that wildfires will get bigger and more frequent as the planet warms.
The other caveat is that U.S. emissions could pick up again once the vaccines are widely distributed and the economy recovers. According to the Rhodium Group report, a similar setback occurred after the 2008-9 financial crisis caused emissions to fall sharply. And it has noted that many sectors, such as air travel and steelmaking, have already recovered in recent months.
“Unfortunately, 2020 tells us little about what we can expect in 2021 and beyond,” the report concluded. “The vast majority of the 2020 emissions reductions were due to reduced economic activity and not to structural changes that would permanently reduce the carbon intensity of our economy.”
Scientists warn that even a large one-year drop in emissions is not enough to stop global warming. Until the emissions of humanity are essentially destroyed and nations no longer add greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the planet will continue to warm up. As if to emphasize the warning, European researchers announced last week that 2020 is most likely linked to 2016 as the warmest year on record.
Elected President Joseph R. Biden Jr. calls global warming a top priority and sets a goal of reducing America’s emissions to net zero by 2050. To do so, experts said, new steps would be needed to accelerate the use of renewable electricity, shifting Americans from gasoline-burning cars to cleaner electric models and reconsidering methods for processes such as home heating or steel and cement production.
And these efforts will have to be repeated all over the world. The International Energy Agency said on Monday that it would publish a detailed blueprint in May on how the world economy could achieve a net release by 2050, pointing out that the global decline in greenhouse gas emissions last year was likely to be temporary, unless the countries have the opportunity to reconsider their dependence on fossil fuels.
“Nothing less than a total transformation of our energy infrastructure is needed,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the agency. “It calls for decisive action this year, next year and indeed every year until 2050.”