Greenhouse gas emissions from power plants dropped 25 percent from 2005 to 2016, according to a report Wednesday from the Environmental Protection Agency.
U.S. emissions overall fell 2 percent to 6.5 billion metric tons in 2016 from 2015 and 11 percent from 2005 levels, according to the 2018 edition of the EPA’s “comprehensive annual report of greenhouse gas emissions.”
The Trump administration, in releasing the report, said the lower emission levels show that Obama-era government regulations it is rolling back are not needed to reduce carbon pollution from the electricity sector.
“This report confirms the president’s critics are wrong again: one-size-fits-all regulations like the Clean Power Plan or misguided international agreements like the Paris Accord are not the solution,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a statement. “American ingenuity and technological breakthroughs, not top-down government mandates, have made the U.S. the world leader in achieving energy dominance while reducing emissions – one of the great environmental successes of our time.”
The EPA report, prepared every year since 1990, looks at U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by source and economic sector.
It is prepared by the EPA in collaboration with other federal agencies including the Energy Information Administration, Department of Defense, Department of Agriculture, and state governments, research and academic institutions, and industry associations.
The report matches other published research that shows U.S. emissions from the electricity sector have fallen over the last decade as the energy system transitions away from high-carbon coal generation to more natural gas and renewables such as wind and solar.
While Pruitt cheered the results, experts say the emissions reductions from the U.S. are not enough to help limit the rise in global temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature at which many scientists say the world would see irreversible effects of climate change.
The U.S. committed to help achieve that goal in the 2015 Paris Agreement that President Trump said he intends to leave.
In addition, recent studies have shown that global emissions of greenhouse gases are rising.
Researchers at the University of East Anglia and the Global Carbon Project released a report in November finding that global emissions were on track to grow 2 percent in 2017 from 2016, reaching 41 billion tons.
The researchers say China, the world’s largest emitter, was the biggest contributor to the increase with a projected growth of 3.5 percent, primarily driven by more coal use.
U.S. carbon dioxide emissions were expected to drop by 0.4 percent last year.
Critics argue the Trump administration, by leaving the Paris Agreement and de-emphasizing regulations, is losing leverage in encouraging countries, especially China, to uphold pledges to reduce emissions.
Another study found that U.S. carbon emissions from transportation were expected to overtake electricity for the first time last year.
