US Carbon Emissions Soared in 2018

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Via the Washington Post, here’s our first estimate of the change in CO₂ emissions in the United States in 2018:

This comes from the Rhodium Group, which adds the following comments:

“We estimate that energy-related CO2 emissions increased by 3.4% in 2018. That’s the second largest annual gain since 1996.”
“The largest emissions growth in 2018 occurred in the two sectors most often ignored in clean energy and climate policymaking: buildings and industry. We estimate that direct emissions from residential and commercial buildings (from sources such as fuel oil, diesel and natural gas combusted on site for heating and cooking) increased by 10% in 2018 to their highest level since 2004.”
“At the state and federal level few good strategies have been implemented to begin decoupling production from emissions. Our preliminary estimates suggest the industrial sector posted the largest emissions gains in 2018 at 55 million metric tons.”

Meeting the Paris Accord levels for CO₂ emissions is all but impossible now, which is no surprise since Republicans in Congress won’t allow any policy changes to address climate change. And as we dither, the global concentration of CO₂ continues to accelerate. The pre-industrial average was about 280 ppm and increased by only 40 ppm in the thousand years before 1958. Then, over the past 60 years, it increased by 95 ppm. In 2018 alone it increased by 3.43 ppm through November, which is a record since measurements began. And still we dither.