CO2 Emissions Fall As Coal Declines
As the United States has gradually shifted away from coal and toward natural gas and renewable energy sources for electric power generation, carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation have been on the decline. C02 emissions from electricity generation totaled 1,925 million metric tons in 2015, the lowest since 1993, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. This shift within the electricity mix even drove down C02 emissions during the last decade or so, when electricity demand remained relatively flat. In 2013 and 2014, however, both total electricity sales and electricity-related C02 emissions increased. But warm winter temperatures, which reduced the demand for electricity and lowered natural gas prices, caused both total electricity sales and C02 emissions from electric power generation to drop again in 2015. According to EIA, coal-fired generation has decreased because of both the economics driven by cost per kilowatt-hour compared to that of natural gas and because of the effects of increased regulation on air emissions. Conversely, natural gas has spent the past couple of years in the spotlight, as the recent drop in natural gas prices, coupled with highly efficient, natural gas-fired, combined-cycle technology, have made natural gas an attractive choice for power generators. As a result, natural gas, along with renewable energy, has dominated recent capacity additions, while most retirements have been coal-fired units. Additionally, renewable energy sources are gaining an increasing share of generation, driven primarily by increases in wind and solar capacity, EIA stated. Nuclear generation was relatively flat over the past decade but remains the single largest source of generation without C02 emissions. Together, renewables and nuclear provided about 33 percent of overall U.S. electricity production in 2015, the highest share on record. - http://www.energycentral.com/functional/news/news_detail.cfm?did=39194983 |