From the summary on page 1:
- Total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2006 were 1.5 percent below the 2005 total—the first annual drop since 2001 and only the third since 1990.
If you click on the thumbnail to the right you can see the numbers. Reducing emissions back to 1990 levels, the emissions goal of the Kyoto Protocol, would involve a 13% reduction from 2006 levels. Under a business as usual policy, and assuming the 2005-2006 results are a trend, the 13% drop will occur in about 11 years.
Also, note that 2001 was a recession year. Hmmmm. Are greenhouse gas emissions a leading economic indicator? I say yes and am now forecasting a recession for 2007.
Here is a PDF link to the report (the HTML format is forthcoming).*
Here are two some other salient bits of the summary:
- U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in 2006 were 110.6 million metric tons (MMT) below their 2005 level of 6,045.0 MMT, due to favorable weather conditions; higher energy prices; a decline in the carbon intensity of electric power generation that resulted from increased use of natural gas, the least carbonintensive fossil fuel; and greater reliance on nonfossil energy sources.
Hmmm, there are all microeconomic conditions. I guess that trashes my recession forecast.
- In 2005, the latest year for which data are available, U.S. land use, land-use change, and forestry activities resulted in total carbon sequestration of 828.5 MMTCO2e, equal to 11.5 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2005.
I wonder how much TerraPass, DriveNeutral and etc have contributed to the 11.5% and whether the sequestration trend is increasing?
*Note: Here are some details about the report:
The Energy Information Administration (EIA), an independent statistical and analytical agency in the U. S. Department of Energy, released the annual report titled "Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2006," on November 28, 2007 in PDF format.
This annual report (and the inventory on which it is based) is prepared by the EIA's Office of Integrated Analysis and Forecasting.
The inventory is pursuant to requirements under Section 1605(a) of the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPACT). Section 1605(a) of EPACT requires that the EIA , "shall develop, based on data available to, and obtained by the Energy Information Administration, an inventory of national aggregate emissions of each greenhouse gas for each calendar year of the baseline period of 1987 through 1990. The Administrator of the Energy Information Administration shall annually update and analyze such inventory using available data." The first report in this series, "Emissions of Greenhouse Gases 1985-1990," was published in September 1993. This report, the fifteenth annual report, presents the Energy Information Administration's latest inventory, as required by law, of emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other greenhouse gases.
