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U.S. Greenhouse Gas Intensity and the Global Climate Change Initiative |
On February 14, 2002, President Bush announced the Administration’s Global Climate Change Initiative [91]. A key goal of the Climate Change Initiative is to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas intensity by 18 percent over the 2002 to 2012 time frame. For the purposes of the initiative, greenhouse gas intensity is defined as the ratio of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to economic output. AEO2005 projects energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, which represented approximately 84 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2002. Projections for the other greenhouse gases are based on an EPA “Business-as-Usual” (BAU) case cited in the Addendum to the Global Climate Change Policy Book [92] released with the Global Climate Change Initiative. Those projections are based on several EPA-sponsored studies conducted in the preparation of the U.S. Department of State’s Climate Action Report 2002 [93, 94, 95, 96]. Table 21 combines the AEO2005 reference case projections for energy-related carbon dioxide emissions with the projections for other greenhouse gases. According to the combined emissions projections in Table 21, the greenhouse gas intensity of the U.S. economy is expected to decline by 14 percent from 2002 to 2012 and by 30 percent from 2002 to 2025 in the reference case. The Administration’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas intensity by 18 percent by 2012 would require an emissions reduction of about 366 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent from the projected level in the reference case. Although AEO2005 does not include cases that specifically address alternative assumptions about greenhouse gas intensity, the integrated high technology case does give some indication of the feasibility of meeting the 18-percent intensity reduction target. In the integrated high technology case, which combines the high technology cases for the residential, commercial, industrial, transportation, and electric power sectors, carbon dioxide emissions in 2012 are projected to be 129 million metric tons less than the reference case projection. As a result, U.S. greenhouse gas intensity would fall by 15.5 percent from 2002 to 2012, still somewhat short of the Administration’s goal of 18 percent (Figure 20). An 18-percent decline in intensity is projected to occur by 2014 in the integrated high technology case, as compared with 2015 in the reference case.
Contact: Daniel Skelly |
