US efforts to cut emissions stall in 2024 as energy demand rises

America’s efforts to reduce its climate change pollution have stalled in 2024, with greenhouse gas emissions falling just a fraction, 0.2 percent, compared to the year before. according to estimates published on Thursday by the Rhodium Group, a research company.

Despite continued rapid growth in solar and wind power, emissions levels remained relatively flat last year as demand for electricity rose across the country, leading to a spike in gas emissions. naturally burned by power plants.

The fact that emissions have not decreased much means that the United States is even further away from hitting President Biden’s goal of reducing greenhouse gases 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. scientists say that all major economies should deeply cut their emissions in this decade. to keep global warming at relatively low levels.

Since 2005, US emissions have fallen by about 20 percent, a significant drop at a time when the economy is still expanding. But to meet its climate goals, US emissions would need to fall nearly 10 times faster each year than they have fallen in the last decade. That looks increasingly unlikely, experts say, especially since President-elect Donald J. Trump he promised to dismantle it Mr. Biden’s climate policies promote the production of fossil fuels, the burning of which generates greenhouse gases.

“On the one hand, it’s remarkable that we’ve now seen two years in a row where the US economy has grown, but emissions have fallen,” said Ben King, associate director of the Rhodium Group. “But it is far from enough to achieve our climate goals.”

The biggest reason U.S. emissions have fallen in recent years is that electric utilities have retired their older, dirtier coal-fired power plants. and replace them with cheaper and less polluting natural gas, wind and solar energy. This trend continued especially last year, with a few unexpected highs and lows.

The nation’s electricity demand, which has been more or less flat for two decades, suddenly jumped by about 3 percent in 2024, in large part because the scorching heat during the summer caused many Americans to turn on their air conditioners. A smaller factor was that tech companies built more energy-hungry data centers in states like Virginia and Texas.

While energy companies installed a large number of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries last year to meet the growing demand, the use of natural gas also increased to record highs, while the use of carbon has decreased only slightly. The net result was that emissions from the energy sector increased by about 0.2 percent, according to the Rhodium Group.

At the same time, transportation, the largest source of greenhouse gases in the nation, saw a 0.8 percent increase in emissions last year. Gasoline and jet fuel consumption have increased as Americans continue to drive and fly more after the pandemic. Almost 10 percent of new car sales in 2024 were less polluting electric vehiclesBut those models still make up a small fraction of the total cars on the road and still don’t make a big dent in transportation emissions.

On the other hand, emissions from America’s industrial sector – which includes steel, cement and chemicals – will fall by 1.8 percent in 2024. Some of this could be the result of the loss of production, as two hurricanes and a strike in the nation’s ports have disturbed some. factory activity in the fall, Mr. King said.

“It’s a reminder that there’s always some bumpiness in emissions,” Mr. King said. “It’s not just a question of how many electric vehicles are on the road or how much solar we have installed. A large part of our economy still depends on fossil fuels.”

One of the most impressive findings in this year’s data was that emissions from oil and gas operations fell by about 3.7 percent in 2024. Although the United States produced record amounts of oil and near-record amounts of natural gas last year, many companies appear to have curbed leaks of methane, which is the main ingredient in natural gas and can seep into the atmosphere and contribute significantly to global warming.

In recent years, the Biden administration and several states have adopted new regulations requiring oil and gas producers to detect and fix methane leaks. Many companies also have financial incentives to capture the methane to sell rather than blow it into the air.

Between 2014 and 2024, U.S. companies appear to have reduced the amount of methane escaping, for every cubic foot of gas produced, by 40 percent, according to the Rhodium Group.

Many experts they estimated that greenhouse gases generated in the United States could begin to decline sharply in the coming years if several clean energy policies remain in place, particularly the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that pumped hundreds of billions of dollars in low-carbon energy technologies such as electric vehicles, wind. turbines, solar panels, nuclear reactors, green hydrogen and batteries.

While Mr. Trump has promised to scrap many of Mr. Biden’s subsidies and tax credits for electric vehicles and low-carbon energy, remains to be seen if Congress will agree.

This law has not yet had a major impact on the country’s emissions, said Mr. King, since it takes time for the opening of new factories and power plants to be built. But, he said, data shows that low-carbon energy and transportation now make up 5 percent of total U.S. private investment.

“It’s a leading indicator that things are changing quickly,” he said.