Wind energy blows US emissions onto right track for 2025 target http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27361-wind-energy-blows-us-emissions-onto-right-track-for-2025-target.html#.VTBP5tyUcnl 16 April 2015 by Fred Pearce Is Uncle Sam going green at last? US carbon emissions from power stations this year are set to be the lowest for 20 years, as decrepit coal-fired power plants shut and clean wind farms and less-dirty natural gas plants replace them.
And back in 1994, the US economy was only 42 per cent of its current size, adding evidence to the idea that an economy can grow while its emissions go down.
This year’s emissions are expected to be 15.4 per cent below 2005 levels. The startling projection comes from analysts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. It suggests that the US may now be on course to meet the promise that the Obama administration will take to UN climate negotiations in Paris later this year, to cut total CO2 emissions by 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2025.
So what is going on? Most attention has focused on the replacement of coal in conventional power plants by natural gas, much of it from fracking. Burning gas emits only half as much CO2 as burning coal.
And there is much more to come from wind, says William Nelson, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. He expects 9 gigawatts more wind generating capacity to be commissioned during 2015, much of it in Texas. It is a wind of change that he calls a giant, permanent step towards decarbonising out entire fleet of power plants.
