US CO2 emissions, midyear review

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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The US Energy Information Administration recently published the CO2 emissions amounts from fossil fuels for 2024 through June.

Past trends continue. CO2 emissions from natural gas continue to go up. Petroleum products (mostly transportation fuels) remain the largest source of CO2 in the US. Coal use continues a long term decline, but has been relatively flat this year compared to 2023. CO2 emissions from natural gas combustion are more than twice that of coal, but nobody wants to talk about that.

In the table below, for the first 6 months of each year listed, going back to just before the COVID crisis.

US CO2 from energy, Jan - June
Millions of metric tonnes
Year  Coal   NG    Oil   Total
2019   528   855   1173   2562
2020   380   841    999   2226
2021   485   849   1083   2422
2022   461   881   1117   2463
2023   353   884   1113   2354
2024   349   897   1104   2354

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Looking at just the electricity sector, the following are the CO2 emissions from the three major fossil fuels for the first 6 months of each year.

US Electricity CO2 emissions, Jan - June
Millions of metric tonnes
Year    Coal    NG   Oil  Total
2019     475   273     8    763
2020     335   294     8    642
2021     438   276     9    728
2022     417   291    10    722
2023     310   317     7    637
2024     310   334     6    654

If we take the total CO2 from the electricity sector, and divide by the total generation for each year, we can calculate the grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity. This metric is often used to compare different countries or regions on a uniform basis. The following are the full-year values, with the exception of 2024, which is for the first 6 months.

US Electricity sector CO2 intensity
Year   CO2   Generation  Grams per kwh
2019  1618   4,130,574       392
2020  1450   4,009,767       362
2021  1553   4,109,699       378
2022  1539   4,230,672       364    
2023  1420   4,178,171       340    
2024*  654   2,069,197       316
* first 6 months

As a comparison, a country like France is around 60 grams/kwh.
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The policy of the US government is to achieve a “carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035”. This is clearly impossible, since the use of natural gas to generate electricity continues to grow, let alone decline to zero. Why do politicians set these unobtainable goals?

_ Pete

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We do read that solar especially and probably wind is growing. That is our best area. But demand for data centers is rising fast. So maybe more nuclear will help.

Transportation energy remains a challenge. The slower acceptance of EVs implies hybrids and better gas mileage are the future but that means incremental improvement. Little hope of net zero anytime soon.

Much more investment in green energy is needed to get there. So many possible green energy sources are undeveloped. Wind, solar, geothermal are grossly under developed.

Politicians maybe mean well but our problem is clearly lack of commitment to those goals.

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The IRA and BIL provide subsidies to extend the life and restart nuclear power plants. Additionally, there is a production tax credit of $25 per megawatt-hour for existing nuclear plants and there are higher production tax credits for advanced nuclear. I don’t know if this will lead to any new nuclear, but probably will avoid more shut downs of existing nuclear.

That said, the key metric to meeting carbon targets isn’t natural gas, it is CO2 emissions. While natural gas use is increasing, coal use is decreasing even faster. The US hit peak CO2 emissions in about 2007 and been declining ever since, even as the population and economy have grown. The rate of renewable adoption needs to increase dramatically in order to meet 2035 climate goals, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible, just hard. There is no point to setting goals you would achieve anyway. Goals should be difficult. That’s why they are goals.

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The 2035 goal is to achieve “100% carbon pollution-free electricity”. That is not just difficult. It is impossible, given past and current trends. Chart from here.

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Electricity generation from natural gas is growing, not shrinking. Natural gas is a fossil fuel that emits CO2 when it is burned. Therefore, the CO2 emissions from natural gas are growing, which I showed in the original post. If you are driving down the road and want to slow down the car and stop, it doesn’t help by pressing down even harder on the gas pedal.

Renewables plus batteries might help in reducing peak demand for a few hours in the late afternoon and early evening, but renewables plus batteries aren’t going to replace the 24/7 baseload and dispatchable generation that keeps the grid going around the clock. People want to use electricity at all hours of the day and night.

Just increasing the intermittent renewables like wind and solar will not solve the problem, because wind and solar are not dispatchable 24 hours a day.

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is expensive and has not been developed on the scale that is necessary. The few number of existing CCS operations in the US use the CO2 to get even more fossil fuels out of the ground through enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes. That doesn’t sound very green to me.

Natural gas power plants produce over 40% of the electricity in the US. This is a large amount of power. Reducing that to zero in 11 years is not just difficult. It is impossible the way things are currently going and there is no credible plan to get it to zero, from what I have seen.

_ Pete

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A friend likes this one: “A goal without a plan is a wish.”

What is the plan?

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I do not agree with your opinion. The government is putting lots of money toward carbon free power sector. Nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, energy storage and grid are getting billions $ and more billions $. These investments take at least 5 years to fully see all the benefits. I think we will come close to the 2035 goal of carbon free power. The biggest hurdles are the fossil fuel companies, the politicians on their payrolls and the Supreme Court.

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See my reply to Pete!

And here is a detail plan of action by our government.

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The government is funding nuclear, energy storage, grid upgrades and renewables. Your graph 2023 already shows that non-fossil sources of electricity account for 40% of all electricity. Coal fired plants will essentially be closed by 2030 and natural gas plants will be essentially closed by 2035. This will happen because the government (with the support of the public) will force the closure of coal and natural gas in order to mitigate CO2 emissions. It costs too much to pay for all the death and destruction caused by climate change.

The intermittent problems of wind and solar will be eliminated with extensive grid upgrades, new nuclear power, new geothermal, new hydropower and extensive long term energy storage.

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As pauleckler noted, serious achievable plans are needed to reach goals. There is also a danger in taking actions with the assumptions that the goals/wishes will be met. For example, things such as eliminating power plants and denying permits for natural gas pipelines can lead to power shortages.

In addition, realistic cost estimates are important for allocation of resources. I’m old enough to remember offshore wind projects being cancelled because they were proving too expensive. How about a proposal for building a high-speed rail system from SF to LA for only $20 billion rather than $120+ billion…

DB2

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2019 skip the pandemic and 2024, the drop in a much more apples to apples comparison is 16.7%.

Clearly wind and solar are taking root and working.

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It is also not entirely clear about what the goals should be and their priorities. For example, there is a decades-long discussion on mitigation versus adaptation.

Mitigation efforts have made some progress although greenhouse gas levels continue to rise and the percentage of total energy usage from fossil fuels is almost static. The temperature change in, say 2050, from mitigation efforts are best measured in hundredths of a degree.

Adaptation goals would seem to be more realistic, achievable and of immediate need.

DB2

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US electricity sector natural gas CO2 emissions
2019: 617 million tonnes
2023: 705 million tonnes
That is an increase of 14% over that time.

The goal is not to build lots of solar and wind power. The goal is to eliminate all CO2 emissions from the US electric power industry. That is not going to happen by 2035 because the dispatchable and reliable natural gas power plants are needed to keep the grid up and running. You can’t do it with just solar panels and wind turbines, since the capacity factors are well below 50% for both.

The people who operate large computer data centers now understand this concept, which is why they are planning to restart old, previously shut down nuclear plants. I would rather see them build new nuclear plants that would have much longer lifetimes, and would have passive safety. But restarting the old nukes is better than tearing them down.

_ Pete

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The atmospheric CO2 concentration will just keep rising as long as China continues to burn 4.5 billion tons of coal every year, and India burns almost 1 billion tons/year. Both nations have made it clear they will keep burning coal to develop their economies.

_ Pete

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I went by your totals. I know NG use went up.
Stop trying to twist things to make a case you do not have.
Nuclear would reduce CO2 but it would be much more costly. We do not have enough sites for it. The clean-up is over millennia.

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I am old enough to remember dozens of nuclear power plants in construction being cancelled because they were proving too expensive.

A few years ago Westinghouse went bankrupt because of the Summer nuclear units in South Carolina were to expensive. Those units were about 50% constructed when they were cancelled.

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Wind and solar keep getting more efficient as do batteries.

Nuclear has a higher inflation rate.
Alternatives have deflationary rates.

If you want to play capitalist with the big boys be consistent.

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You keep only presenting your lame claim about wind and solar.

There are more ways to mitigate the drawbacks of solar and wind as I presented earlier. You ignore the other ways that solar and wind can and will be supplemented: utility scaled energy storage, grid expansion, nuclear power, geothermal, hydroelectric, and biomass all of which are dispatchable.

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But the intensity has been reduce greatly. The total CO2 emissions increased because of new fossil units built in last 5 years.

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Emissions dropped by 16.7% comparing the totals from only 2019 and then 2024. He failed to prove that false by bringing up the increase in NG emissions. Coal use decreased and alternatives increased. He avoided reality.

2024 was not an exception. His report is from Sept 2024. He does not even follow the conversation.

He keeps BSing the boards.

The utility guys play for their pensions.

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Emissions dropped because natural gas is a cleaner burning fossil fuel than coal. The US executive branch’s goal is to get to zero CO2 emissions in the electricity sector by 2035. They are not going to achieve that goal if natural gas use keeps rising, which it will do for the foreseeable future as more coal plants are shut down. The government does not have a serious plan.

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You don’t know anything about me, so stop making assumptions.

_ Pete