Shilling for the EIA

The US's Energy Information Agency, which is part of the DOE, is a really amazing organization that offers a staggering amount of information, relatively clearly presented - about the US's energy picture, of course, but also a fair amount of info about the global energy picture. If I'm not mistaken, until recently the UN relied on the US EIA's data for tracking emissions globally and by country. If you want an important number about energy, there's a reasonably good chance the EIA has it.

Anyway. I was thinking of this today because I was looking for info on investment and, in looking at the EIA's page, I found the nifty set of charts they have headlining their Environment subsection. Take a look at this, which charts the US's energy-related emissions growth from 1990 to 2009:

(EIA 2011, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/environment/emissions/carbon/index.html)

US energy-related emissions growth was flat or negative in 6 out of 19 years. Of course, we need it to start being negative basically every year pretty soon, but still. That's actually a bit better than I might have thought.

You should also be noting that emissions declines track pretty well to recessions, which isn't surprising. The ongoing Great Recession has actually had a fairly large effect on global emissions. Some of that will be lost when the economy recovers, but some of it will probably be permanent, to the extent that it's the oldest, least efficient operations that tend to get scrapped during recessions (though such effects may quickly be swamped by new development in a year or two).

Consider this other chart from the same EIA series:

(EIA 2011, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/environment/emissions/carbon/index.html)

This is nifty. Basically, four things go into emissions: population, GDP, energy intensity of the economy (that is, energy used per average unit of GDP), and carbon intensity of energy (that is, carbon emitted per unit of energy). Right now, the US is growing in population (which tends to raise emissions) and declining in GDP per capita (which tends to lower emissions).

It's also decreasing in energy intensity. That could come from a variety of things:
1) On-going shift from a manufacturing economy to a service economy
2) Acceleration of manufacturing loss caused by stresses from the recession
3) Increases in efficiency as the most inefficient operations die off (naturally or in response to recession)
4) Privately incented efficiency measures (that is, steps toward efficiency that private actors would take anyway)
5) Publicly incented efficiency measures, like those in ongoing programs and in special one-offs like the relatively large efficiency measures subsidized by the stimulus bill
6) Other things I haven't thought of, doubtless

In the US, energy intensity tends to decrease, which is typical as a country develops, but not necessarily inevitable - for instance, China has absorbed a lot of our energy-heavy manufacturing like steel, aluminum, and glass; so their energy intensity may or may not be decreasing, net.

Finally, the carbon intensity of energy is declining. I would love to think that's from renewables entering the market, and it probably is to some degree, but it's probably also from efficiency measures at fossil fuel-based plants. And there may be a recession effect their as well: if power companies need to supply less power in general, they may be cycling up their older, least efficient, peak-power-only plants less often, increasing total carbon efficiency.

So, bottom line, this chart is cool! But it needs a little unpacking. The "GDP" chunk is likely not actually the only chunk that contains recession-related effects.