US Power Plant CO2 Emissions - Fastest Growth in a Decade

Robert W Scherer Power Plant is a coal-fired plant just north of Macon, Georgia.

It emits more carbon dioxide than any other point in the United States.

WASHINGTON, D.C. March 18, 2008
A poor progress report on efforts to rein in greenhouse gases:

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from U.S. power plants climbed 2.9 percent in 2007, the biggest single year increase since 1998, according to new analysis by the nonprofit and nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) of data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Now the single largest factor in U.S. climate change pollution, the electric power industry’s carbon dioxide emissions have risen 5.9 percent since 2002 and 11.7 percent since 1997.

“The current debate over global warming policy tends to focus on long-term goals, like how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent over the next fifty years. But while we debate, CO2 emissions from power plants keep rising, making an already dire situation worse. Because CO2 has an atmospheric lifetime of between 50 and 200 years, today’s emissions could cause global warming for up to two centuries to come.”