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Even without the clean power plan, US can achieve Paris Agreement emissions reductions
by By Shilo Rea for CMU News
Pittsburgh PA (SPX) Feb 19, 2018

illustration only

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have calculated that the U.S. can meet - or even beat - the near-term carbon dioxide emission reductions required by the United Nations Paris Agreement, despite the Trump Administration's withdrawal of the Clean Power Plan (CPP).

Published in an Environmental Science and Technology viewpoint, the CMU team used data from U.S. Energy Information Administration's 2017 Annual Energy Outlook to examine projected power sector carbon dioxide emissions to determine if the CPP emission targets for 2020, 2025 and 2030 can still be met.

They found that emissions declined from 2.7 billion tons to an estimated 1.9 billion tons and revealed a strong link to natural gas prices as being a driving market force. The decrease puts U.S. emissions reduction at the CPP's planned 2025 target this year.

"The U.S. has already come quite far in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The biggest driver of lower carbon dioxide emissions has been declining natural gas prices, which has allowed the industry to replace coal-fired power plants economically with cleaner natural gas power plants - and without a costly regulatory mandate," said Jeffrey J. Anderson, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy.

Additional actions are needed to assure longer-term compliance with Paris Agreement objectives - and to safeguard against the impact of a rise in natural gas prices. For example, regulatory and legislative focuses should be on maintaining the trajectory that the market forces have created to sustain the current transition period into the intermediate future.

To meet longer-term and deeper de-carbonization goals, there will be a need for proactive regulatory activity. In addition, incentivizing low or zero carbon dioxide-emitting sources, improving energy efficiency and encouraging repowering and retrofitting options are other important avenues to de-carbonizing the power sector.

"Our work shows that the U.S. power sector could meet the Paris Agreement goals even without the Clean Power Plan, and that the path to compliance can be a collection of politically feasible, minimally invasive actions - if we plan ahead and start now," said David Rode, a recent Ph.D. graduate from the Department of Social and Decision Sciences.

+ In addition to Anderson and Rode, Paul Fischbeck, professor of social and decision sciences and engineering and public policy, and Haibo Zhai, associate research professor of engineering and public policy, worked on this research and article.

Research paper



Americans are spending more time at home, and it's saving a lot of energy
Washington DC (SPX) Feb 19 - Researchers have identified a positive trade-off for the rise in online shopping, our consumption of streaming video, and employees working from home. Despite increasing the amount of residential energy demand, the decrease in travel and use of non-residential spaces was responsible for a net 1,700 trillion bTU in energy savings for the United States in 2012, 1.8% of the national total. The analysis, published January 29 in the journal Joule, reflects how advances in information technology are changing the American lifestyle, particularly for those under the age of 65.

A decade of American Time Use Surveys revealed that Americans spent on average an extra 8 days at home in 2012 compared to 2003, 1 day less traveling, and 1 week less in non-residential buildings.

The greatest change was seen in people ages 18-24, who spent 70% more time at home compared to the general population. People over 65 were the only group to spend more time outside the home in 2012 compared to 2003. When these behavioral changes were mapped to energy use, overall it accounted for a 480 trillion bTU increase in energy used at home and a 1,000 trillion bTU and 1,200 trillion bTU decrease in energy used for non-residential and transportation spaces, respectively.

"We did expect to see net energy decrease, but we had no idea of the magnitude," says first author Ashok Sekar (@_ashok7), a postdoctoral fellow who studies consumer energy use and policy at the University of Texas at Austin.

"This work raises awareness of the connection between lifestyle and energy. Now that we know people are spending more time at home, more focus could be put on improving residential energy efficiency." Sekar conducted the study with Eric Williams and Roger Chen, sustainability researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

It's difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons for these lifestyle changes, but the authors suggest that the trends reflect advances in information and communication technology that have led to increased video watching and computer use, and better work-from-home options

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts the American Time Use Survey each year. About 11,000 people are asked to record how they allocate their time. Sekar says that the data are reliable and comparable to other datasets, such as Nielsen surveys, but come with some caveats.

For example, the survey only captures one activity at a time, so if someone is cooking and on their computer, a respondent only reports cooking. The data also do not reflect energy used when participants are abroad during the survey.

Sekar is planning further work to examine lifestyle changes in other countries and specific activities.

"Right now, the analysis is a comparison only at the sector level; I would like to disaggregate even further and think about energy trade-offs at activity level for, e.g., going to restaurants versus ordering food online," he says.

"I'd like to include details we have not been able to capture."

Research Report: "Changes in time use and their effect on energy consumption in the US"


Related Links
Carnegie Mellon University
Climate Science News - Modeling, Mitigation Adaptation


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CLIMATE SCIENCE
Research identifies 'evolutionary rescue' areas for animals threatened by climate change
Missoula MT (SPX) Feb 16, 2018
As winters arrive later and snow melts earlier, the worldwide decrease in snow cover already may have dramatic impacts on animals that change coat colors with the seasons. An international scientific team led by University of Montana Professor L. Scott Mills has set out to discover whether adaptive evolution can rescue these animals in the face of rapidly changing climate. Twenty-one species of mammals and birds rely on the ability to change their coat color from brown in summer to white in winter ... read more

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