Corporate renewables procurement had a record year and coal-fired power plant retirements picked up in 2018, but a new report from the Rhodium Group found that energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the US actually rose sharply.
During the three years prior to 2018, CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion were on the decline, according to the Rhodium Group’s Preliminary US Emissions Estimates for 2018.
“Based on emissions data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) for the first three quarters of the year, weekly EIA petroleum supply data, plus daily power generation and natural gas data from Genscape and Bloomberg, respectively, we estimate that energy-related CO2 emissions increased by 3.4% in 2018,” the energy and climate staff concluded.
The Rhodium Group researchers said that this was the second-largest annual gain since 1996. Only the 3.6% increase in 2010, when emissions rebounded from a recession-driven 7.2% decline the year before, was higher.
If coal-fired power is on the decline and renewables are on the rise, what’s going on?
Although a record 11.2 GW of coal-fired power generation capacity that had disappeared by last October and another 2.5 GW scheduled to retire before the end of 2018, the researchers point out that natural gas picked up the slack.
“Natural gas-fired generation increased by 166 billion kWh during the first ten months of the year,” the report said. “That’s three times the decline in coal generation and four times the combined growth of wind and solar.”
As CBS MoneyWatch’s Irina Ivanova noted, natural gas is cleaner-burning than coal but still a fossil fuel that emits carbon dioxide. “Earlier studies have found that switching over all the world's coal plants to natural gas would do little to curb climate change,” she wrote.
Other sectors also contributed to higher emissions. Gasoline demand declined last year, but robust growth in trucking and air travel increased demand for diesel and jet fuel by 3.1% and 3.0%, respectively, the report said.
Buildings and the industrial sector contributed as well. Direct emissions from residential and commercial buildings reached their highest level since 2004, according to the researchers. Major growth in industrial activity caused the sector to post the largest emissions gains in 2018: 55 million metric tons, the Rhodium Group says. “Absent a significant change in policy or a major technological breakthrough we expect the industrial sector to become an increasingly large share of US greenhouse gas emission in the years ahead.”
We are currently accepting submissions for the 2019 Energy Manager Awards. Learn more and submit a project or product here.
