The Latest US CO2 Fantasy
18 hours ago
Willis Eschenbach
I see that Joe Biden is about to propose a new CO2 goal. This goal would be to get down to half of the 2005 CO2 emissions by 2030. So I thought I’d see what that would entail.
In 2005, the US emitted almost exactly 6,000 megatonnes (MT, a million metric tonnes) of CO2. Unlike in most countries, US CO2 emissions have been dropping since 2005, and we’re currently at about 4,900 MT per year. To meet the fantasy goal, we’d need to reduce our CO2 emissions by 1,900 MT of CO2 per year.
Now, the amount of CO2 emitted per petawatt hour (PWh, or 10^15 watthours) of US fossil energy consumption has been dropping slowly since about 2009. Currently, we emit about 213 MT of CO2 per PWh of fossil fuel used for energy. The average over the next nine years, if the trend continues, will be about 208 MT of CO2 per PWh.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/21/the-latest-co2-fantasy/
