US emissions rise 3.4%

Passenger planes at the Phoenix airport in July. Greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes and trucking increased sharply in 2018.CreditCreditAngus Mordant/Bloomberg

From the New York Times:

America’s carbon dioxide emissions rose by 3.4 percent in 2018, the biggest increase in eight years, according to a preliminary estimate published Tuesday.

Strikingly, the sharp uptick in emissions occurred even as a near-record number of coal plants around the United States retired last year, illustrating how difficult it could be for the country to make further progress on climate change in the years to come, particularly as the Trump administration pushes to roll back federal regulations that limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The estimate, by the research firm Rhodium Group, pointed to a stark reversal. Fossil fuel emissions in the United States have fallen significantly since 2005 and declined each of the previous three years, in part because of a boom in cheap natural gas and renewable energy, which have been rapidly displacing dirtier coal-fired power.

Yet even a steep drop in coal use last year wasn’t enough to offset rising emissions in other parts of the economy. Some of that increase was weather-related: A relatively cold winter led to a spike in the use of oil and gas for heating in areas like New England.

But, just as important, as the United States economy grew at a strong pace last year, emissions from factories, planes and trucks soared. And there are few policies in place to clean those sectors up.

“The big takeaway for me is that we haven’t yet successfully decoupled U.S. emissions growth from economic growth,” said Trevor Houser, a climate and energy analyst at the Rhodium Group.

As United States manufacturing boomed, for instance, emissions from the nation’s industrial sectors — including steel, cement, chemicals and refineries — increased by 5.7 percent.

Policymakers working on climate change at the federal and state level have so far largely shied away from regulating heavy industry, which directly contributes about one-sixth of the country’s carbon emissions. Instead, they’ve focused on decarbonizing the electricity sector through actions like promoting wind and solar power.

But even as power generation has gotten cleaner, those overlooked industrial plants and factories have become a larger source of climate pollution. The Rhodium Group estimates that the industrial sector is on track to become the second-biggest source of emissions in California by 2020, behind only transportation, and the biggest source in Texas by 2022.

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With electricity generation, we are going to reach 100% renewables within 20 years, simply because the costs of wind and solar and batteries and concentrated solar power are falling so fast.  As for electric cars and lorries, by 2021 or 2, the sticker price of EVs will be close to the price of ICEVs.  10 years from now, the majority of cars and lorries sold will be electric.  20 years form now you will be hard pressed to even buy a new petrol or diesel vehicle.

But that still leaves iron and steel production, cement production, sea transport, air transport and heating.  Depending on the country, these plus agriculture make up something like 25 to 40% of total emissions.  What's more, as emissions from electricity generation and land transport decline, their percentages will rise.  How to deal with them?

The obvious answer is a price on carbon.  And I believe that the political push to get a price on carbon will become irresistible.  Already, the EU is demurring at trade deals with countries which do not have a carbon price (Australia, for example.)  It seems only a matter of time before they add a carbon charge to imports from countries without a carbon price, so that their own industries aren't disadvantages, and so that the emissions of what they consume aren't just shifted to developing countries.  Apart from the most ideologically challenged, most countries will accept this reality and introduce their own carbon price.  And that can't happen soon enough.