Those federal actions have had ripple effects throughout the country’s utilities. Southern Company has extended the lifespans of its coal-fired plants in Mississippi and Georgia. North Carolina’s legislature passed the “The Power Bill Reduction Act,” which will allow Duke Energy to backslide on its legally mandated carbon emissions reductions.
APS, Arizona’s largest utility, is following suit on its own accord.
On top of it all, she added, is that the Arizona Corporation Commission, the state’s elected public utilities regulators, is now completely controlled by Republicans following extensive lobbying by APS. The commission is now seeking to repeal the state’s renewable energy standards.
By walking back its clean energy commitments, extending the life of coal plants and building new gas pipelines, Arizona’s air quality and heat issues will only get worse…
As Arizona’s population and economy continue to grow at unprecedented levels, so does the state’s need for reliable electricity.
“Our mission is to reliably serve customers at the lowest cost possible. To do that, we need to integrate the most reliable and cost-effective resources available to us to meet Arizona’s fast-growing energy needs,” said Geisler.
As a result, the company is updating its clean energy goals from an aspirational “zero-carbon” approach to an aspirational “carbon-neutral” approach by 2050. The company also is removing its interim targets to better reflect APS’s near-term need to ensure reliability and affordability, while relying on the Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) process to help determine the most responsible path forward.
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From the EIA, Arizona’s electricity system produced 34,788,000 metric tons of CO2 in 2023, or about 35 million tonnes.
Total global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels were 37,792 million tonnes in 2023.
35 / 37792 = 0.000926, or 0.09% of global emissions for Arizona. (For AZ electricity)
It doesn’t matter what Arizona does. The CEO of Pinnacle West can’t stop China from burning 4.5 billion tons of coal every year. That, along with the 36 billion barrels of petroleum and the 4 trillion cubic meters of natural gas burned globally every year, guarantees a rising atmospheric CO2 concentration. It is going up around 2 to 3 ppm every year, and will continue to do so.
Arizona can claim the old worn out excuse to burn more coal, oil and natural gas. However, as shown in many examples on this board China is going in the opposite direction than Arizona and the USA in the use of fossil fuels. When will USA increasing green house gas emissions intersect with the Chinese decreasing green house gas emissions?
The following study in 2024 is an example of forecasting the future CO2 emissions by China, USA and others. However, this data is already grossly out of date since it does not include the recent Chinese progress with EVs, solar, wind, hydro and nuclear, nor does it include the Trump effect on tearing up the Inflation Reduction Act, the Trump war on wind and solar, the Trump effect on EVs, and the Trump effect on increasing the use of fossil fuels.
One point of clarification. The 0.09% only refers to the CO2 from electricity for Arizona. If we look at CO2 from all energy (transportation, industry, etc.), then the percentage is more like 0.2%. Still well below 1%.
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The long term trend for the USA is slowly downwards, not upwards. The long term trend for China is quickly upwards, not downwards.
There might be a blip upward for the US this year, since more coal is being burned. That trend might continue for the next few years. We shall see. But China is well above the US in CO2 emissions, and the gap is increasing. China continues upward. I don’t see that trend changing any time soon, despite certain hopeful predictions that China’s coal consumption is peaking. I’ll believe it when I see it.
I totally disagree with your statements. Your graph of China’s emissions is 2.5 years old. You need to look at midyear 2025 data.
China is showing decline in greenhouse gas emissions because of the investment and production of wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, batteries, EVs, and other non-fossil fuel endeavors.
USA as I said earlier is destroying the support and permitting of wind, solar, EVs, batteries, and other alternative non-fossil energy development. Trump is demanding the expansion of fossil fuel development development with out any economic backup because the fossil fuels industry is demanding a return to dirty coal, oil and gas. Trump has abandoned environment regulations for fossil fuels and all the pollution they generate (coal ash, greenhouse gas emissions, toxic chemical releases, toxic waste disposal, air and water pollution harming millions of people.
