Where America’s CO2 Emissions Come From: What You Need to Know, in Charts

Earth’s atmosphere contains carbon dioxide, which is good for life on Earth – in moderation. Plants use CO₂ as a source of carbon, they turn into leaves and wood via photosynthesis. In combination with water vapor, CO₂ isolates Earth, preventing it from turning into a frozen world. Life as we know it on Earth would not exist without CO₂ in the atmosphere.

However, since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have added more and more carbon dioxide to the Earth’s atmosphere, which has become a problem.

The atmospheric concentration of CO₂ has increased more than 50% since industries began burning coal and other fossil fuels in the late 1700s, reaching concentrations that have not been found in Earth’s atmosphere for at least a million years. And the concentration continues to grow.

Excess CO2 is the cause of global warming

Who cares? Everyone should do it.

More CO₂ in the air means that temperatures on the Earth’s surface are increasing. As temperatures rise, the water cycle speeds up, leading to more floods and droughts. Glaciers are melting and warmer ocean waters are expanding, raising sea levels.

We are living with increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires, heat waves, floods and hurricanes, all influenced by increasing CO.₂ concentrations in the atmosphere.

The ocean also absorbs part of this CO₂making the water increasingly acidic, which can harm species essential to the marine food chain.

Where does this additional CO2 come from?

Largest source of additional CO₂ is the burning of fossil fuels – oil, natural gas and coal – to power vehicles, electricity generation and industries. Each of these fuels is made up of hydrocarbons produced by plants that have grown on Earth over the past several hundred million years.

These factories absorbed CO₂ outside the planet’s atmosphere, died and their biomass was buried in water and sediment.

Today, humans are reversing hundreds of millions of years of carbon accumulation by extracting these fuels from the Earth and burning them for energy.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

Where do CO2 emissions in the United States come from?

The Environmental Protection Agency has been tracking greenhouse gas emissions in the United States for years.

The United States emitted 5,053 million tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere in 2022, the last year for which a complete emissions inventory is available. We also emit other greenhouse gases, including methane, from natural gas production and animal agriculture, and nitrous oxide, created when microbes digest nitrogen fertilizers. But carbon dioxide accounts for about 80% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Of these 5,053 million tonnes of CO₂ issued by the United States in 2022, 93% came from the combustion of fossil fuels.

More precisely: around 35% of CO₂ emissions came from transportation, 30% from electrical power generation, and 16%, 7%, and 5% from on-site fossil fuel consumption by industrial, residential, and commercial buildings, respectively. Electric power production was almost equally used in industrial, residential and commercial buildings.

What fossil fuels are burned?

Transportation is dominated by petroleum products, or petroleum – think gasoline and diesel.

Nationally, power plants consume roughly equal fractions of coal and natural gas. The use of natural gas has increased and coal use has declined in this sector, a trend driven by the rapid expansion of the shale gas industry in the United States.

American forests eliminate CO₂ from the atmosphere, but not fast enough to offset human emissions. American forests have extracted and stored approximately 920 million tons of CO₂ in 2022.

How CO2 emissions in the United States have changed

U.S. emissions peaked around 2005 at 6.217 million tons of CO2. Since then, emissions have been slowly declining, largely due to the replacement of coal with natural gas in electricity generation.

Some other notable trends will impact the future:

First, the U.S. economy has become more energy efficient over time, increasing productivity while reducing emissions.

Second, solar and wind power generation, while still a modest fraction of total energy production, has seen steady growth in recent years and emits virtually no CO.₂ in the atmosphere. If the country increasingly relies on renewable energy sources and reduces the consumption of fossil fuels, it will significantly reduce its CO emissions.₂ emissions.

Solar and wind power have become a new energy source that is cheaper than natural gas and coal, but the Trump administration is cutting federal support for renewable energy and doubling subsidies for fossil fuels. The growth of data centers is also expected to increase electricity demand. How the United States meets this demand will impact national CO₂ emissions in the years to come.

How US Emissions Compare Globally

The United States ranks second in terms of CO₂ global emissions in 2022, behind China, which emitted around 12,000 million tonnes of CO₂. China’s annual CO₂ emissions surpassed U.S. emissions in 2005 or 2006.

However, over time, the United States has emitted more CO₂ into the atmosphere than any other country, and we still emit more CO₂ per person than most other industrialized countries. Both Chinese and European emissions account for about half of U.S. emissions per capita.

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere mix evenly around the world, so emissions from industrialized countries affect the climate of developing countries that have benefited very little from the energy created by burning fossil fuels.

Takeaways

There have been promising downward trends in CO in the United States.₂ CO2 emissions and rising trends in renewable energy sources, but political winds and growing energy demand threaten progress in reducing emissions.

Reducing emissions across all sectors is necessary to slow or even stop the increase in atmospheric CO.₂ concentrations. The world has the technological means to significantly reduce emissions. CO₂ emitted into the atmosphere today persists there for hundreds or even thousands of years. The decisions we make today will influence Earth’s climate for a very long time.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent, nonprofit news organization that brings you trusted facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Kenneth J. Davis, Penn State

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Kenneth J. Davis does not work for, consult, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.