CO2 emissions in US drop to 20-year low

[jimmy olsen]

Excellent news. 

http://chippewa.com/news/science/ap-impact-co-emissions-in-us-drop-to--year/article_7c4b1db4-9e78-52ce-8156-a5403934f777.html

AP IMPACT: CO2 emissions in US drop to 20-year low


August 17, 2012 10:30 am  •  Associated Press

In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.

Many of the world's leading climate scientists didn't see the drop coming, in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.

Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for "cautious optimism" about potential ways to deal with climate change. He said it demonstrates that "ultimately people follow their wallets" on global warming.

"There's a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources," said Roger Pielke Jr., a climate expert at the University of Colorado.

In a little-noticed technical report, the U.S. Energy Information Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said this month that energy related U.S. CO2 emissions for the first four months of this year fell to about 1992 levels. Energy emissions make up about 98 percent of the total. The Associated Press contacted environmental experts, scientists and utility companies and learned that virtually everyone believes the shift could have major long-term implications for U.S. energy policy.

While conservation efforts, the lagging economy and greater use of renewable energy are factors in the CO2 decline, the drop-off is due mainly to low-priced natural gas, the agency said.

A frenzy of shale gas drilling in the Northeast's Marcellus Shale and in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana has caused the wholesale price of natural gas to plummet from $7 or $8 per unit to about $3 over the past four years, making it cheaper to burn than coal for a given amount of energy produced. As a result, utilities are relying more than ever on gas-fired generating plants.

Both government and industry experts said the biggest surprise is how quickly the electric industry turned away from coal. In 2005, coal was used to produce about half of all the electricity generated in the U.S. The Energy Information Agency said that fell to 34 percent in March, the lowest level since it began keeping records nearly 40 years ago.

The question is whether the shift is just one bright spot in a big, gloomy picture, or a potentially larger trend.

Coal and energy use are still growing rapidly in other countries, particularly China, and CO2 levels globally are rising, not falling. Moreover, changes in the marketplace _ a boom in the economy, a fall in coal prices, a rise in natural gas _ could stall or even reverse the shift. For example, U.S. emissions fell in 2008 and 2009, then rose in 2010 before falling again last year.

Also, while natural gas burns cleaner than coal, it still emits some CO2. And drilling has its own environmental consequences, which are not yet fully understood.

"Natural gas is not a long-term solution to the CO2 problem," Pielke warned.

The International Energy Agency said the U.S. has cut carbon dioxide emissions more than any other country over the last six years. Total U.S. carbon emissions from energy consumption peaked at about 6 billion metric tons in 2007. Projections for this year are around 5.2 billion, and the 1990 figure was about 5 billion.

China's emissions were estimated to be about 9 billion tons in 2011, accounting for about 29 percent of the global total. The U.S. accounted for approximately 16 percent.

Mann called it "ironic" that the shift from coal to gas has helped bring the U.S. closer to meeting some of the greenhouse gas targets in the 1997 Kyoto treaty on global warming, which the United States never ratified. On the other hand, leaks of methane from natural gas wells could be pushing the U.S. over the Kyoto target for that gas.

Even with such questions, public health experts welcome the shift, since it is reducing air pollution.

"The trend is good. We like it. We are pleased that we're shifting away from one of the dirtiest sources to one that's much cleaner," said Janice Nolen, an American Lung Association spokeswoman. "It's been a real surprise to see this kind of shift. We certainly didn't predict it."

Power plants that burn coal produce more than 90 times as much sulfur dioxide, five times as much nitrogen oxide and twice as much carbon dioxide as those that run on natural gas, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Sulfur dioxide causes acid rain and nitrogen oxides lead to smog.

Bentek, an energy consulting firm in Colorado, said that sulfur dioxide emissions at larger power plants in 28 Eastern, Midwestern and Southern states fell 34 percent during the past two years, and nitrous oxide fell 16 percent. Natural gas has helped the power industry meet federal air pollution standards earlier than anticipated, Bentek said.

Last year the Environmental Protection Agency issued its first rules to limit CO2 emissions from power plants, but the standards don't take effect until 2014 and 2015. Experts had predicted that the rules might reduce emissions over the long term, but they didn't expect so many utilities to shift to gas so early. And they think price was the reason.

"A lot of our units are running much more gas than they ever have in the past," said Melissa McHenry, a spokeswoman for Ohio-based American Electric Power Co. "It really is a reflection of what's happened with shale gas."

"In the near term, all that you're going to build is a natural gas plant," she said. Still, she warned: "Natural gas has been very volatile historically. Whether shale gas has really changed that _ the jury is still out. I don't think we know yet."

Jason Hayes, a spokesman for the American Coal Council, based in Washington, predicted cheap gas won't last.

"Coal is going to be here for a long time. Our export markets are growing. Demand is going up around the world. Even if we decide not to use it, everybody else wants it," he said. Hayes also said the industry expects new coal-fired power plants will be built as pollution-control technology advances: "The industry will meet the challenge" of the EPA regulations.

The boom in gas production has come about largely because of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Large volumes of water, plus sand and chemicals, are injected to break shale rock apart and free the gas.

Environmentalists say that the fluids can pollute underground drinking water supplies and that methane leaks from drilling cause serious air pollution and also contribute to global warming. The industry and many government officials say the practice is safe when done properly. But there have been cases in which faulty wells did pollute water, and there is little reliable data about the scale of methane leakage.

"The Sierra Club has serious doubts about the net benefits of natural gas," said Deborah Nardone, director of the group's Beyond Natural Gas campaign.

"Without sufficient oversight and protections, we have no way of knowing how much dangerous pollution is being released into Americans' air and water by the gas industry. For those reason, our ultimate goal is to replace coal with clean energy and energy efficiency and as little natural gas as possible."

Wind supplied less than 3 percent of the nation's electricity in 2011 according to EIA data, and solar power was far less. Estimates for this year suggest that coal will account for about 37 percent of the nation's electricity, natural gas 30 percent, and nuclear about 19 percent.

Some worry that cheap gas could hurt renewable energy efforts.

"Installation of new renewable energy facilities has now all but dried up, unable to compete on a grid now flooded with a low-cost, high-energy fuel," two experts from Colorado's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute said in an essay posted this week on Environment360, a Yale University website.

How much further the shift from coal to natural gas can go is unclear. Bentek says that power companies plan to retire 175 coal-fired plants over the next five years. That could bring coal's CO2 emissions down to 1980 levels. However, the EIA predicts prices of natural gas will start to rise a bit next year, and then more about eight years from now.

Despite unanswered questions about the environmental effects of drilling, the gas boom "is actually one of a number of reasons for cautious optimism," Mann said. "There's a lot of doom and gloom out there. It is important to point out that there is still time" to address global warning.

___

Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein in Washington and Jonathan Fahey in New York contributed to this story.

[DGuller]

Wait, I though Obama's administration made coal energy production so expensive that coal mining communities had to resort to cannibalism to survive.  Now it's just market forces?

[sbr]

Obama declared War on Coal.

[Admiral Yi]

I don't get the coal ads either.

[Neil]

Is this actually a good thing, or is it just that more and more carbon-intensive industry is being outsourced?

[OttoVonBismarck]

Wait, I though Obama's administration made coal energy production so expensive that coal mining communities had to resort to cannibalism to survive.  Now it's just market forces?

As usual you are retarded.

Obama has done the following things that have hurt the coal industry:

1. Through the EPA, instituted policies which make it difficult/impossible for new coal power generation to be brought online.

2. Through the EPA, instituted costly retrofit requirements on old coal power plants (this has often just resulted in their operators decommissioning them, as the cost was simply too high to justify continuing operations.)

3. Through the EPA water regulations, blocked new permits for certain types of coal mining (specifically mountaintop removal mining.)

These are all real, and actually hurt the coal industry. He's certainly not "made coal power generation so expensive as to be uncompetitive" but he has certainly made it very hard to build new coal power plants and/or mine more coal. The Federal courts recently struck down the EPA's actions in regard to mountaintop mining, noting that they had overstepped the statutes underlying the EPA's power and what they were trying to do was properly within the sphere of the State-level environmental agencies (who are much friendlier with coal companies.)

What I find interesting is Obama bails out a bunch of pro-Obama unionized autoworkers in Michigan and it's the greatest thing ever (by the way, during Obama's second term most likely GM will be bankrupt again so we get to bail those lazy overpaid union fucks out twice), but we all know the coal miners don't like black folk and voted for McCain, so not only do they not get government largesse they get shit on directly.

But that's what happens when you elect a Chicago politician President, it's graft and spoils just like the gilded age.

[Razgovory]

   It's cute when Otto talks like he knows something.  Cause the gilded age graft was all about helping autoworker unions while hurting the coal companies.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Is this actually a good thing, or is it just that more and more carbon-intensive industry is being outsourced?

Continued natural gas exploration and production is definitely good. Coal has all sorts of problems associated with it, fracking has actually never been linked to anything bad in and of itself and natural gas is cleaner burning by far. We have conservatively 100 years of shale gas with more being discovered all the time, some estimate it may be more than 300 years of supply.

Coal will always be important for the steel industry, but most people should be happy that its time as a power source is slowly coming to an end in the United States. With coal the CO2 actually isn't the worst thing, CO2 is a long term problem but coal actual releases radiation into the air during burning that we can say almost certainly kills many people through cancers and etc. (A coal power plant releases more radiation into the air in a year than a nuclear plant does in its normal operating life.) Coal mining is also very dirty, polluting water and causing all kinds of problems. There are tons of studies linking high birth defects to coal mining operations polluting the water table, and studies linking all kinds of negative health problems to living anywhere near a coal power plant. Coal power plants actually kill real people in the present tense, so they're bad even if they didn't put any CO2 into the atmosphere.

But for Obamatards like DGuller to act as though the Republican claims against Obama vis-a-vis coal are made up is just stupid. Now, the people who mine coal are also troglodytes (literally) who shouldn't even be permitted to vote and they have only themselves to blame for living in the god forsaken hellholes that makeup the coal fields, but they are totally correct that Obama has fucked them.

[OttoVonBismarck]

  It's cute when Otto talks like he knows something.  Cause the gilded age graft was all about helping autoworker unions while hurting the coal companies.

I know they don't teach this in mental hospitals or your mom's basement, so let me grab something out of 10th grade English for you:

simile
Definition
sim·i·le[ símməlee ]
sim·i·les      Plural
NOUN
1.
figurative language drawing comparison: a figure of speech that draws a comparison between two different things, especially a phrase containing the word "like" or "as," e.g. "as white as a sheet"

That's why you can say "like the Gilded Age" and not literally be talking about the Gilded Age.

For example I might say, "this administration is Nixonesque in its behavior" and it's not accurate to say "oh, but they didn't break into Watergate." But this sort of language is simply too esoteric for retarded people, so I understand where we lost you.

[DGuller]

As usual you are retarded.

Well, duh.  Retardation is not one of those things that come and go.

[Razgovory]

  It's cute when Otto talks like he knows something.  Cause the gilded age graft was all about helping autoworker unions while hurting the coal companies.

I know they don't teach this in mental hospitals or your mom's basement, so let me grab something out of 10th grade English for you:

simile
Definition
sim·i·le[ símməlee ]
sim·i·les      Plural
NOUN
1.
figurative language drawing comparison: a figure of speech that draws a comparison between two different things, especially a phrase containing the word "like" or "as," e.g. "as white as a sheet"

That's why you can say "like the Gilded Age" and not literally be talking about the Gilded Age.

For example I might say, "this administration is Nixonesque in its behavior" and it's not accurate to say "oh, but they didn't break into Watergate." But this sort of language is simply too esoteric for retarded people, so I understand where we lost you.

There is nothing "Like the Gilded age" in what you said anymore then if I said, "Otto is like the Gilded Age in picking up the Fox News line of a 'Chicago politician'.  And you really shouldn't refer to yourself as "we".  At least not at the same time you castigate me for being crazy.

[jimmy olsen]

What I find interesting is Obama bails out a bunch of pro-Obama unionized autoworkers in Michigan and it's the greatest thing ever (by the way, during Obama's second term most likely GM will be bankrupt again so we get to bail those lazy overpaid union fucks out twice),

I thought they were back on top selling the most vehicles in the world?

[Eddie Teach]

fracking has actually never been linked to anything bad in and of itself

Syphilis, herpes, chlamydia, AIDS... 

[OttoVonBismarck]

I thought they were back on top selling the most vehicles in the world?

They were relatively close to that when they went bankrupt. Has the relevant details. Since GM's IPO their share price has fallen to around $20 from an initial of $33 (while the rest of the Dow has gone up in that same time.) They are also simply not turning out products that are competitive, just like the old GM. It would be very surprising if they manage to avoid bankruptcy because their current generation of vehicles compares poorly to competition from Toyota and Ford and even Volkswagen which is having a renaissance in the U.S. It'll be years before GM's next generation of cars come out so you're looking at poor performance for probably 4-5 years, which current GM would be unlikely to survive without assistance.

[OttoVonBismarck]

There is nothing "Like the Gilded age" in what you said anymore then if I said, "Otto is like the Gilded Age in picking up the Fox News line of a 'Chicago politician'.  And you really shouldn't refer to yourself as "we".  At least not at the same time you castigate me for being crazy.

I'm not castigating you for being crazy, I recognize that is outside your control. But I also recognize it makes you incapable of discussing things like a normal person. Your continual inability to understand a simple metaphor demonstrates you just simply aren't worth discussing the matter on, but just to educate you before kicking you into the dust bin:

When I said "graft and spoils just like the Gilded Age" I was saying "the Gilded Age was a time of lots of graft and spoils" meaning "I consider Obama blatantly propping up union workers who supported him while not doing the same for other blue collar workers who did not support him to be akin to the graft and spoils that was common in Gilded Age america and typical of a Chicago politician." Is it exactly the same? No, the Gilded Age had more of politicians directly enriching themselves along with enriching business partners, but that's why it is a metaphor (a simile is a subtype of metaphor just in case you were confused), which means by its intrinsic nature the two things being compared are not exactly the same.

It's like saying "he's as fat as a pig", the person is not literally as heavy as swine, it's a metaphor.