it literally does nothing but put MORE carbon into the atmosphere via production unless we couple it with drawing down fossil fuel usage.
You are completely incorrect.
This study, among others, not only confirms a reduction in emissions, but estimates more than 40% of a reduction by 2035 based on 2005 numbers.
When I was in college, my goal was to work for a green energy company. I didn’t think that was realistic for a chemical engineer for at least 15 years at best. And now, about 5 years after graduating? I’m working for a company that generates green energy and is also decarbonizing other industries.
I know doomposting has its place, but it should at least be factual.
And how does that jive with record numbers of new oil and gas development leases? Do you not think those will raise emissions? Why are we putting trillions into new fossil fuel pipelines and production if we’re lowering our emissions? Not to mention that our emissions did not fall 2 OR 4% last year, they went UP 1.4%. The trend of emissions going down ended at the end of 2020.
The IRA wasn’t passed until more than halfway through the year. I’m not surprised that our emissions didn’t fall, given the bill wasn’t even 6 months old, and all government actions are lagging – i.e, the effects of a given bill aren’t seen immediately, but in the future. This should be a readily apparent observation.
In addition, there’s two other factors you aren’t accounting for here. It’s possible for emissions to go positive for a few years and we still end up with a 40% reduction in 2035. Because of the lagging nature I mentioned, I’d actually expect this to be the case. Development and construction of renewable energy facilities will lead to net increases in emissions at first, but once they power on, they’ll cut our emissions significantly.
Second, it is possible to have increases in emissions from oil and gas and still have an overall reduction in emissions. With oil and gas increasing emissions, we need to more deeply cut emissions somewhere else. If new oil and gas plants add +10% emissions, but renewable energy reduces our total emissions by 30%, we’re still -20% overall.
I have a problem with your final but of analysis there.
If fossil fuels raise our emissions 10%, they’ve raised our emissions 10%. Renewables don’t lower our emissions, they just don’t raise them anymore. If instead of building new O&G infrastructure we were decommissioning facilities, then the added energy output from renewables could be used to replace O&G, which would bring down our emissions not because we built renewable, but because we lessened O&G. However, building more infrastructure will lead to increased emissions, regardless of the amount of renewable infrastructure we build.
I’ll wait and see if your lagging indicator works out, but in the meantime, all available data shows our emissions have risen so far this year, likely due to a combination of said increased infrastructure, and severe heat waves prompting increased use of AC.
That study is talking about the US, it’s not talking about the world. If the US has done all of this work, and yet climate change is STILL happening and we’re dealing with it right now then the US is not the problem.
But why isn’t it working? Because China is the biggest polluter
https://world101.cfr.org/global-era-issues/climate-change/who-releases-most-greenhouse-gases
All I can affect is US emissions. It also rubs me the wrong way to be angry at China and them off for industrializing with high emission technology, after the West has finished their industrializing.
That said, climate science doesn’t take fairness and equity into account. Do you have ideas on how the US and China could work together to reduce emissions without us pulling up the ladder behind us?
