The United States has led the world in reductions of greenhouse gas emissions since 2005, mostly through private-sector innovation and market forces.
“The trend is decarbonization,” said George David Banks, chief strategist for Republicans on the House Select Climate Committee and a former international energy adviser to President Trump. “That’s likely to continue even in a business-as-usual scenario just because of innovation.”
Nevertheless, the U.S. before this year was not on pace to meet a target set by the Obama administration as part of the Paris Agreement in 2015 to reduce emissions 26% to 28% from 2005 levels by 2025.
Former President Barack Obama said the target would put the U.S. on a path to achieve economywide emissions reductions of 80% or more by 2050.
President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to rejoin the Paris Agreement, which Trump rejected, and to meet and exceed the pace of emissions cuts envisioned by the Obama administration in order to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. That means the U.S. would stop adding any new emissions to the atmosphere.
That’s in line with new findings from United Nations scientists in 2018 that the world would need to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 in order to achieve the goal of the Paris Agreement to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or “well below” 2 degrees. The world is on pace for a temperature increase of more than 3 degrees Celsius this century. Saturday is the fifth-year anniversary of the Paris pact.
U.S. emissions were only 12% below 2005 levels as of January, according to the Rhodium Group, well off even the Obama targets.
“We are certainly not decarbonizing at a pace needed to meet a target like that,” said Tom Cyrs, a research associate at the World Resources Institute.
Still, the U.S. might have an outside chance of achieving the Obama-era target but only inadvertently because of a once-in-a-century pandemic that shut down the economy and slammed demand for transportation fuels, causing a record drop in emissions this year. Emissions are expected to rise again in 2021 as the economy recovers.
Goals are still a long way off
The U.S. had mostly steady emissions reductions in the early part of last decade in the aftermath of the Great Recession. U.S. emissions peaked in 2007.
But then, U.S. emissions increased in 2018 for the first time since 2014, a rise that was mostly chalked up to more energy use because of extreme summer and winter weather but also reflective of a trend of stalling out in emissions reductions in recent years as the economy has grown. Carbon emissions fell again slightly in 2019.
The progress of natural gas and renewables replacing more expensive, and dirtier, coal in the electricity sector has only intensified in the Trump administration — the biggest reason for the U.S. leading in absolute emissions reductions.
“We have seen a pretty rapid move away from coal in the last 10 to 15 years, and that shows no signs of abating despite Trump’s attempts to shore up the coal industry,” said Alden Meyer, U.S. manager of the International Climate Politics Hub.
But the federal government under Trump has not imposed policies mandating or encouraging greater reductions.
Climate analysts say policies such as a carbon tax or cap are needed to decarbonize parts of the economy where emissions have increased or remained steady, such as transportation, the highest-emitting sector, heavy manufacturing, and buildings.
Trump, meanwhile, has removed or weakened a number of Obama-era environmental rules that could lead to greater emissions in the future.
“In the absence of new policy and Trump easing off some policies, you’ve seen emissions stop falling,” said Nat Keohane, senior vice president for international climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.
How Biden would lower emissions
Biden has vowed to spend $1.7 trillion over a decade to support clean energy and electric vehicles.
Environmental groups close to the Biden transition team say he’d have to set a goal of reducing emissions 45% to 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 in order to stay on track for net-zero emissions by 2050. That could be tough without cooperation from Congress on carbon taxes or mandates.
States, cities, and businesses are expected to pick up some of the slack. America’s Pledge, a group created by billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg after Trump rejected the Paris Agreement, said last year that subnational actors across the U.S. could achieve up to 37% emissions reductions below 2005 levels by 2030 without the federal government’s help.
“It’s a big challenge for Biden,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and energy systems analyst at the Breakthrough Institute. “There will be a lot of pressure just to make a big commitment even if we don’t see a pathway to it. At the same time, there is danger for him setting a commitment so divorced from what we can accomplish that it isn’t motivating or sets us up for failure.”
