U.S. efforts to cut climate change pollution will stall in 2024, with greenhouse gas emissions down just 0.2% from a year ago, according to estimates released Thursday by research firm Rhodium Group.
Even as solar and wind power continue to grow rapidly, emissions levels remained relatively low last year as demand for electricity soared nationwide and the amount of natural gas burned in power plants soared. It remained flat.
The fact that emissions have not fallen much means that the United States is further away from meeting President Biden's goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Scientists say all major countries will need to significantly reduce emissions this decade. Limiting global warming to relatively low levels.
Since 2005, U.S. emissions have fallen by about 20%, a significant drop at a time when the economy is also expanding. But to meet climate goals, U.S. emissions will need to fall nearly 10 times faster each year than they have in the past decade. That seems increasingly unlikely, especially as President-elect Donald J. Trump has vowed to repeal Biden's climate change policies and boost production of fossil fuels, which produce greenhouse gases when burned. experts point out.
“Meanwhile, it's worth noting that while the U.S. economy grew for the second year in a row, emissions fell,” said Ben King, associate director at Rhodium Group. “But it is still not enough to meet climate goals.”
The biggest reason U.S. emissions have fallen in recent years is because power companies are retiring old, dirty coal-fired power plants and replacing them with cheaper, less polluting natural gas, wind and solar power. . This trend largely continued last year, but with some unexpected ups and downs.
The country's electricity demand, which had been roughly flat for 20 years, suddenly jumped by about 3% in 2024. This is largely due to the fact that the scorching summer heat has caused many Americans to turn up their air conditioning. A smaller factor is that tech companies are building energy-intensive data centers in states like Virginia and Texas.
Utilities installed tons of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries last year to meet rising demand, but natural gas use also rose to a record high, while coal use fell slightly. I stayed there. The net result was an estimated 0.2% increase in emissions from the power sector, Rhodium Group said.
At the same time, emissions from the transportation sector, the country's largest source of greenhouse gases, increased by 0.8% last year. Gasoline and jet fuel consumption both increased after the pandemic as Americans drove more cars and flew more. Although nearly 10% of new car sales in 2024 were low-polluting electric vehicles, these models still make up a small proportion of all vehicles on the road and have yet to make a significant impact on transportation emissions. plug.
Meanwhile, emissions from the U.S. industrial sector, which includes steel, cement, and chemicals, fell by 1.8% in 2024. Some of that may be due to production disruptions caused by two hurricanes and attacks on the nation's ports. King said the plant will be more active in the fall.
“This is a reminder that there will always be some variation in emissions,” King said. “This is not just a question of how many electric cars we have on the road or how much solar power we have installed. Much of our economy still relies on fossil fuels.”
One of the most impressive findings in this year's data is that emissions from oil and gas operations fell by about 3.7% in 2024. Even though the U.S. produced record amounts of oil and near-record amounts of natural gas last year, many companies are still working on producing natural gas, the main component of natural gas that permeates into the atmosphere and contributes significantly to global warming. We have suppressed methane leakage that may have occurred.
Over the past few years, the Biden administration and several states have introduced new regulations requiring oil and gas producers to detect and repair methane leaks. Many companies also have an economic incentive to capture methane for sale rather than releasing it into the atmosphere.
From 2014 to 2024, U.S. companies reduced the amount of methane released per cubic foot of gas produced by 40 percent, according to Rhodium Group.
Several experts believe that if a number of clean energy policies continue, especially the Inflation Control Act of 2022, which pumps hundreds of billions of dollars into low-carbon energy technologies, greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. will skyrocket in the coming years. We estimate that it may start to decline. Electric cars, wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear reactors, green hydrogen, batteries.
Trump has promised to eliminate many of Biden's subsidies and tax credits for electric vehicles and low-carbon energy, but it remains to be seen whether Congress agrees.
The law has not yet had a significant impact on the country's emissions, King said, because it takes time for new factories to come online and power plants to be built. But data shows that low-carbon energy and transportation now account for fully 5 percent of total U.S. private investment, he said.
“This is a leading indicator that the situation is changing rapidly,” he said.
