So 2006 was a blip after all. U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide in 2007 rose 1.6%, the Energy Information Administration said Tuesday, chalking up the rise to 2.2% economic growth and variable weather.
For the Bush administration, the fact that emissions grew less than the economy means things are getting more efficient. Since 1990, emissions per unit of GDP have fallen 26%. That’s good news for the president’s plan to cut the intensity of greenhouse-gas emissions by 18% between 2002 and 2012, even though a lot of people think that’s a bogus measure because overall emissions can still rise as the economy gets bigger.
So what was the big culprit? Electricity. Emissions from the power sector rose 3%, even as electricity generation rose just 2.5%. In other words, power generation got dirtier last year, even at the height of the debate over how to create a clean-energy future.
For some observers, that’s proof of the bankruptcy of the Bush administration’s climate and energy policy. (And the fact that emissions grew less than the economy is just a reminder of how much U.S. manufacturing has been outsourced.)
For the EIA, it’s a reflection that hydroelectric power fell off in 2007, thanks partially to droughts. That put the onus onto other types of power generation—like natural gas, the fuel of choice to replace coal at power plants. While cleaner than coal, natural gas isn’t lily-white.
And who was using that dirtier electricity? It wasn’t industry, which continued cutting its emissions, as it has on average since 1990, giving big business more ammunition to argue that it’s already doing its part to clean up. American households were the big disappointment—emissions rose 4.4%.
That’s a useful reminder of where the heavy lifting lies, even as so much of the climate-change debate in Washington centers on how to strong-arm industry and utilties into cleaning up their act. As Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute noted last month in the WSJ, those residential emissions represent a high standard of living: flat-screen TVs, tumble dryers, and ubiquitious air conditioning.
Trimming America’s emissions enough to meet the targets politicians preach, Mr. Hayward wrote, will mean putting U.S. household energy-consumption on par with Haiti and Somalia. Or, at the very least, re-inventing the country’s entire electricity infrastructure in a few short decades. And as the 2007 numbers show, natural gas alone won’t do it. How likely is it that renewable energy and nuclear power will pick up the slack?