America is producing fewer carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per dollar of economic output, according to a set of charts published in an article Tuesday by an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) scholar.
“Energy-related CO2 emissions per unit of real GDP have been falling for at least the last 35 years, and have fallen by about 50% since 1980,” Dr. Mark Perry, a scholar at AEI and professor of economics at University of Michigan’s Flint campus, wrote Tuesday. “These ‘green’ energy-related trends: falling CO2 emissions, especially in the electric power sector, and declining energy intensities and carbon intensities in the US economy, are developments that have been made possible only because of the shale revolution and the revolutionary technologies that have opened up oceans of shale gas in America to extraction and production.”
Perry aggregated data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) into an a series of charts that show how the U.S. is producing more goods with less CO2. The amount of U.S. CO2 emissions per dollar of economic output has declined 28 percent since 1990, according to EIA data.
Impressive. #energyefficiency #CO2 @Mark_J_Perry https://t.co/aAQTO9pNXb pic.twitter.com/cDdBdVER9v
— AEIdeas Blog (@AEIdeas) May 10, 2016
The EIA report Perry cites attributes falling CO2 emissions to “decreased use of coal and the increased use of natural gas for electricity generation.” Natural gas emits about half the CO2 of coal power and is already cheaper than coal in many locations due to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The EIA estimates that roughly 68 percent of the falling CO2 emissions are due to the switch from coal to natural gas.
Fracking, not government green policies, has caused CO2 emissions to drop sharply in 47 states and Washington, D.C., according to both Scientific American and other studies by the EIA.
Studies show that fracking for natural gas is responsible for almost 20 percent of the decline in CO2 emissions, while solar power is responsible for a mere 1 percent of the decline. For every ton of CO2 cut by solar power, fracking cut 13 tons.
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