In a speech before the Atlantic Council Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry praised President Barack Obama’s “Climate Action Plan” for making huge strides in the crusade against global warming.
“We are emitting less than we have in two decades” due to Obama #climate action plan, @JohnKerry says #ACclimate
— Valerie Volcovici (@ValerieVolco) March 12, 2015
But Kerry’s praise is misplaced. It’s unclear if Obama’s “Climate Action Plan” has had any impact on U.S. carbon dioxide reductions in the past few years. Government data shows that U.S. emissions began to fall in 2007 — Obama’s “Climate Action Plan” wasn’t announced until summer 2013.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data shows that greenhouse gas emissions (which includes carbon dioxide, methane and other sources) began to level out in the mid-2000s, peaking in 2007 at 7.45 million metric tons before plummeting 6.4 percent by 2009 as the country went into recession.
Obama took office in 2009 when the economy was down, and the country has been hampered by slow recovery ever since, which has also meant that carbon dioxide emissions stayed relatively low as well. In 2009, the U.S. emitted about 6.79 million metric tons of CO2 and by 2013 the country was only emitting 6.74 million metric tons of greenhouse gases.
In 2009, Obama pledged to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 — a major commitment, but one that he largely did not act on until his second term.
In fact, it wasn’t until June 2013 that Obama officially announced his “Climate Action Plan” that included regulations on power plant emissions. In March 2014, Obama announced a plan to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas drilling.
But while Obama was promising regulations on carbon dioxide, the private sector was already reducing emissions.
Around the time Obama took office a little-known technology called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was being coupled with horizontal drilling to extract natural gas locked in deep underground shale formations. These technologies unlocked huge reserves of natural gas, collapsing prices to the point where utilities began switching from burning coal to gas for electricity.
It’s the switch from coal to gas that’s caused much of the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions since Obama took office. Coal is more carbon-intensive than natural gas, so fuel switching led to power plants using less carbon-intensive fuels.
“In 2012, CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion decreased by 3.8 percent relative to the previous year,” according to an EPA report. The agency attributed much of the CO2 reduction to “a decrease in the carbon intensity of fuels consumed by power producers to generate electricity due to a significant decrease in the price of natural gas compared to the slight increase in the price of coal.”
The agency also said that small improvements in fuel efficiency and warmer weather conditions during the winter helped to lower energy-related greenhouse gas emissions as well for 2012. But emissions did go up in 2013 when natural gas prices spiked and a cold winter hit the U.S.
Even so, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that natural gas from fracking is causing U.S. emissions to fall. The IPCC said “the rapid deployment of hydraulic‐fracturing and horizontal‐drilling technologies… has increased and diversified the gas supply and allowed for a more extensive switching of power and heat production from coal to gas … this is an important reason for a reduction of GHG emissions in the United States.”
But what’s more important to reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions is the carbon-intensity of the economy — a figure that has been falling for decades as industry becomes more efficient at using energy and producing goods.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration notes that the U.S. economy’s carbon intensity — the amount of emissions per million dollars in the economy — has plummeted 67 percent since 1949. It should be noted that carbon intensity has been rapidly falling since before the EPA or the Department of Energy were even formed.
So, sorry, Kerry. Obama’s “Climate Action Plan” is a little late to the game.
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