The Obama administration is moving to clamp new greenhouse gas rules on power plants. | M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO U.S. carbon emissions keep falling

The U.S. energy sector’s carbon dioxide emissions fell last year to their lowest level in almost two decades, continuing a trend that has both supporters and opponents of President Barack Obama’s climate policies claiming vindication.

The nation’s energy-related CO 2 emissions dropped by 3.8 percent in 2012 as Americans drove fewer miles, cars continued to become more fuel efficient, power companies increasingly switched from coal to natural gas and the U.S. economy as a whole got more bang for each unit of energy, the federal Energy Information Administration reported Monday.


That brought last year’s carbon emissions to their lowest level since 1994, the agency said in the new report, just days after reopening its doors with the end of the government shutdown. During that same 28-year period, real U.S. gross domestic product rose 56 percent.

“This shows that the economy continues to grow even with carbon pollution reductions,” said Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress, which supports Obama’s climate agenda. “The Obama administration’s energy policies are playing a big role in these reductions, particularly the fuel economy standards, and investments in renewables and efficiency.”

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The Obama administration is moving to clamp strict new greenhouse gas rules on future and existing power plants, and Weiss’s group would like to see it follow up with restrictions on carbon emissions from fuel refineries.

But the American Petroleum Institute said the credit for the carbon drop belongs to industry, which, among other things, has pursued the fracking boom that helped fuel the surge in natural gas use.

The U.S. oil and natural gas industry “invests more in zero- and low-emissions technologies than the federal government and nearly as much as all other industries combined,” said Howard Feldman, API’s director of regulatory and scientific affairs. “Innovations in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have helped make the U.S. the biggest developer of natural gas in the world, and these technologies are a great example of how we can grow the economy, create jobs and clean the air.”

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Energy accounts for the vast majority of domestic CO 2 emissions, and the drop could help nudge the U.S. closer to meeting the pledge Obama made four years ago at international climate talks in Copenhagen: By 2020, he said, the nation will put out 17 percent less carbon dioxide than it did in 2005. (The energy sector’s decrease in that period has been about 12 percent.) But scientists have warned that much steeper drops are required to avert the worst threats posed by rising seas and other effects of climate change.

Still, the EIA said, last year’s drop was notable.

“After 1990, only the recession year of 2009 saw a larger percentage emissions decrease than 2012,” the agency said. But unlike those recession-stricken years, last year saw GDP rise by 2.8 percent — while energy consumption fell 2.4 percent.

The result was a “large drop in energy intensity,” specifically a 5.1 percent decline in energy use per dollar of GDP, the agency said.

Carbon emissions have decreased in five of the past seven years.

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The EIA noted that half of the decline in energy use came from home use as “a very warm first quarter of the year lowered energy demand and emissions.” Meanwhile, the agency said, the amount of energy lost by the electricity system fell by 4.8 percent, “implying an efficiency increase in electricity generation, transmission and distribution of over 1 percent.”

Over the longer term, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each unit of GDP has been on a downward trend since records began in 1949. But the 6.5 percent drop in 2012 was the largest reported drop. Only two other years — 1952 and 1981 — had declines greater than 5 percent, the EIA said.

“When adjusted for economic growth and inflation, the United States has cut its energy needs by more than 50 percent since 1973, and the trend shows no signs of slowing,” said Margot Anderson, executive director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Energy Project. “Demand reductions will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but moving forward, we shouldn’t put all of our eggs in the efficiency basket. It will take more than improvements in energy efficiency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to recommended levels.”

Erica Martinson contributed to this report.