Just months after the Bush administration heralded a decrease in U.S. emissions for 2006–a reduction that was widely attributed to mild summer weather–a new report claims that Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from U.S. power plants rose 3% in 2007–the biggest one-year jump in nearly a decade.
CO2 emissions from U.S. power plants climbed 2.9% in 2007, according to new analysis by the nonprofit and nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) of data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Now the single largest factor in U.S. climate change pollution, the electric power industry’s carbon dioxide emissions have risen 5.9% since 2002 and 11.7% since 1997.
The new EIP report shows that the 10 states with the biggest one-year increases in CO2 pollution are: Texas, Georgia, Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Virginia and North Carolina.
The EIP report provides context for the ongoing battles over proposed new coal plants. The report notes: “The data make clear why national environmental groups have expended so much effort trying to stop the construction of a new batch of conventional coal-fired power plants, which would make a bad situation worse. For example, the eight planned coal-fired plants that TXU withdrew in the face of determined opposition in Texas would have added an estimated 64 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, increasing emissions from power plants in that state by 24%."
It continues: "All of the top 10 highest emitting plants in the nation, either held steady or increased CO2 output from 2006 to 2007. Georgia Power’s Scherer plant – the highest emitting plant in the nation, emitted 27.2 million tons of CO2 in 2007, up roughly 2 million tons since 2006.”
Commenting on the report, Eric Schaeffer, director, Environmental Integrity Project, Washington, D.C. said: “The current debate over global warming policy tends to focus on long-term goals, like how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% over the next fifty years. But while we debate, CO2 emissions from power plants keep rising, making an already dire situation worse. Because CO2 has an atmospheric lifetime of between 50 and 200 years, today’s emissions could cause global warming for up to two centuries to come.”
According to the EIP report, the consumption of electricity accounted for more than 2.3 billion tons of CO2 in 2006, or more than 39.5% of total emissions from manmade sources, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Coal-fired power plants alone released more than 1.9 billion tons, or nearly one third of the U.S. total.
The Department of Energy projects that carbon dioxide emissions from power generation will increase 19% between 2007 and 2030, due to new or expanded coal plants. An additional 4,115 megawatts of new coal-fired generating capacity was added between 2000 and 2007, with another up to 15,000 megawatts expected to come online in the 2008 through 2012 timeframe.
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