The US Keeps Getting Greener

[Valin]

Via Meadia:

Feb 16 2017

 

 

The Environmental Protection Agency still exists—though House Republicans have introduced a bill that would seek to change that, and President Trump is reportedly ready to sign executive orders to hamstring the agency’s climate change-related efforts—and it just released its annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions report. The published information only runs through 2015, owing to the lag associated with such large data sets, but what we do know is, well, encouraging. The Hill reports:

 

(Snip)

 

 

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions hit a 25-year low over the first six months of 2016, continuing the progress that the EPA says we made in 2015. In both cases, the drop in emissions was largely put down to a decline in coal usage (coal is the dirtiest and highest-emitting fossil fuel). Interestingly, it was cheap shale gas and not President Obama’s Clean Power Plan that dethroned Old King Coal.

 

That’s why fracking should be considered green, and it’s also why we shouldn’t expect Donald Trump to increase our overall emissions. Trump is fracking friendly, and as many times as he promised to revive the coal industry during his campaign, he won’t rein in the shale boom just to make coal country happy. The oil and gas that revolution is unleashing is just too important to our energy security and the U.S. economy to ignore.

 

(Snip)