Posted on 03/18/2008 4:10:48 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON – The amount of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, released by the nation's power plants grew by nearly 3 percent last year, the largest annual increase in nearly a decade, an environmental group said Tuesday.
The analysis of government emissions figures covered more than 1,000 plants including those burning coal, natural gas and oil.
The report by the Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that the 2.9 percent increase in CO2 releases outpaced a 2.3 percent year-to-year increase in electricity production.
“Carbon emissions actually increased faster than (electricity) demand,” said Eric Schaeffer, the group's executive director. He said reduced efficiency of older coal-burning power plants that often are some of the largest coal burners may have been one reason for the CO2 increase.
The report said that Texas, Georgia, Arizona, California and Pennsylvania had the biggest one-year increases.
Bill Sang, climate issues director for the Edison Electric Institute, said the increase reflected greater demand for power last year and a shortage of hydroelectric power that forced utilities to shift to fossil fuels.
“We think as much as two-thirds of the (CO2) increase was due to increased demand for electricity,” said Sang, whose organization represents utilities that generate 70 percent of the electricity.
Carbon dioxide is the leading so-called “greenhouse gas” that is linked to global warming. It is a product of burning fossil fuels. Power plants account for nearly 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, about a third of the U.S. total.
“The amount that we're emitting today makes any long-term (reduction) goals that much harder to reach,” said Schaeffer.
The group used data on 2006 and 2007 carbon dioxide emissions from the Environmental Protection Agency and the federal Energy Information Administration. Emissions levels are dependent on a variety of factors from weather to economic growth or decline.
Earlier this year, President Bush cited a 1.3 percent decline in overall CO2 emissions in 2006, compared to a year earlier. Much of that decline was attributed to a mild winter and cool summer, which resulted in less energy demand for heating and cooling.
The Scherer coal-burning power plant, operated by Georgia Power, produced the most CO2 in 2007, about 27 million tons, and showed a year-to-year increase of 2 million tons, the environmentalists said.
“Any increase in emissions that we have is due to increased electricity production,” said Georgia Power spokeswoman Carol Boatright. “Georgia is one of the fastest-growing states in the country. Our demand for energy is growing.”
Melissa McHenry, spokeswoman for Ohio-based American Electric Power, which has 25 coal-burning power plants in nine states, said her company showed a 2.8 percent increase in CO2 emission in 2007, but “we also saw a 3.6 percent increase in electricity demand.” She said AEP is investing in wind generation and purchasing carbon “offsets” through a carbon exchange program.
According to the environmental group's analysis, the most CO2 in 2007 came from power plants in Texas, 262 million tons; Ohio, 138.6 million tons; Florida, 134.5 million tons; Indiana, 132 million tons; and Pennsylvania, 123.6 million tons. Those numbers did not take into account amount of power produced.
States where plants release the most CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity generated were North Dakota, Wyoming, Kentucky, Indiana and Utah.
Talk about your inconvenient truths and the true effects the ecowackos and the politicos they support have had in getting us to this point... but it goes unnoticed and they are given a pass.
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I know I, personally, used more energy this heating season. It was our worst winter in HISTORY, and it was freakin’ COLD out. We had close to 90” of snow!
Too bad, so sad. I’m not turning my heat any lower. Mother Earth was here before me, and she’ll be here after me. She wins! :)
Blame lies squarely at the feet of the enviromentalist nutjobs that have for three decades demonized nuclear power which is safe, produces zero carbon dioxide emissions, and decreases our dependence on foreign oil.
It’s long past time to burn uranium. More and more and more of it!
Stupid enviromaroons.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is plant food.
Without the sophisticated conversion of carbon dioxide and water vapor into any of a vast multitude of carbohydrates and oxygen (O2), humanity would not be alive on this planet and discussing the ramifications of atmospheric CO2.
The atmosphere of the primeval earth was made up of methane, carbon dioxide, ammonia and water vapor. Whatever nitrogen exists in the air is a result of the dissociation of ammonia, so there must have been quite a lot of ammonia to begin with. Whatever oxygen is in the air is a result of the photosynthesis of carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrate (general formula: C6H12O6) and free oxygen, O2.
Oxygen is one of the most corrosive substances in the Universe, combining with practically everything. Only fluorine is more reactive or corrosive. Free oxygen CANNOT continue to exist in the absence of a means to constantly replenish the supply. Every bit of this supply comes from the approximately 0.0384% of the atmosphere that is CO2.
Which means, that some 99.9616% of the atmosphere is NOT CO2.
Now, as to the effect of being a “greenhouse gas”, the most important such compound is water vapor, a highly variable constitutent of the atmosphere, which has anywhere from 20 times to well over a thousand times the effect of CO2 on the retention of heat in the atmosphere. But water vapor is a highly fungible substance, and has a number of characteristics that render it a much more powerful and effective means of regulating the earth’s temperature than the feeble capabilities of CO2.
One is, that water can exist in any one of three states, often simultaneously, of solid, liquid and as a gas. Such is the nature of water, is that it takes a tremendous amount of heat (some 80 or so calories per gram of water) to change one gram of ice into one gram of water, at the freezing point of water (32 degrees F, 0 degrees C), but even more to convert liquid water into water vapor, some 540 calories to change one gram of liquid water into water vapor. This conversion of liquid water to water vapor may occur at any point above the freezing point of water, as a reversible change, right up to the boiling point of water (212 degrees F, 100 degrees C), when the conversion is complete. To raise the temperature of one gram of water 1.8 degrees F, or 1.0 degrees C, requires one calorie of heat. So from ice, to boiling water, to steam, requires approximately 720 calories of heat energy per gram of water.
That is, in terms of all the grams of water on this planet, a truly HUGE amount of heat to either be gained or lost, to affect the temperature of this planet even a little. Over all the eons that Earth has been in existence, these thermal balances have worked out very nicely, and nothing mankind can do will seriously affect the balance very much if at all, either way.
Well, maybe bust the planet open, and allow all that heat from the molten core to escape. Or encourage the sun to go nova.
Both of these possibilities may be well beyond our capabilities at the moment.
WASHINGTON – The amount of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, released by the nation’s power plants grew by nearly 3 percent last year, the largest annual increase in nearly a decade, an environmental group said Tuesday.
.......................... which triggered a very cold winter, eh?
Just think how much colder it would have been without all of that excess CO2!
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