In 2010, Ernest Moniz, then a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the lead author on a report that predicted the United States would lower its carbon dioxide emissions by switching from coal to natural gas in the production of electricity. Scientific American reported the following in a profile of the MIT research: “When used to fire a power plant, gas emits about half of the carbon dioxide emissions as conventional coal plants.”
In 2013, Moniz became the Secretary of Energy in the Obama administration, where he witnessed his 2010 natural gas prophecy come true. But the good news of falling CO2 emissions because of abundant American natural gas is still furiously resisted by our climate nonprofits.
Fighting Reduced Emissions
In 2022, the European Union adopted a new energy policy taxonomy that permitted low-carbon natural gas and carbon free nuclear energy to be accepted within its greenhouse gas reduction goals. The World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace and ClientEarth took the EU to court to try and reverse the decision.
But the American switch to natural gas has led to a real reduction in carbon emissions.
In 2007, coal provided almost half of the fuel for American electricity production, and natural gas only 22 percent. By 2023, this had flipped to 42.4 percent natural gas and 15.9 percent coal.
Also in 2007, total U.S. CO2 emissions peaked at the historic high.
But by 2023, American carbon emissions had fallen by 20 percent from that all-time high, and emissions per person fell by 30 percent.
The Tradeoff
While the tradeoff from coal to natural gas between 2007 and 2023 resulted in a 510 million metric ton increase in total annual natural gas–related CO2 emissions, it resulted in a 1.4 billion metric ton reduction from reduced coal use.
The net annual reduction of 893 million metric tons of carbon emissions is equal to 73 percent of the drop in American carbon emissions since 2007. The net annual reduction also exceeded the total 2023 carbon emissions (from all sources, not just electricity production) of both Germany and France put together.
Put another way, the American switchover to natural gas in electricity production alone was enough to cancel out the total combined annual CO2 emissions of two of the world’s 10 largest economies.
Finally, natural gas is mostly methane, another greenhouse gas that is blamed for climate change. While it stands to reason that switching from coal to gas in electricity generation might lead to higher methane emissions in the United States, information from Our World in Data shows the opposite has occurred.
From 2007 through 2023, total American methane emissions declined 9 percent, and methane emissions per capita fell 20 percent.
