Greenhouse gas emissions in the United States rose last year, snapping a two-year streak of declines as cold winter temperatures drove demand for heating fuel and the AI boom led to a surge in power generation, a think tank said on Tuesday (Jan 13).
The 2.4 per cent increase in the world’s largest economy came as President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress enacted a series of policies hostile to climate action, though the authors of the Rhodium Group report said the full impact of those decisions will only be felt in the coming years.
year on Rich nations, including Europe’s largest economies Germany and France, are slowing the pace of planet-warming gas reductions even as global temperatures continue to soar, with 2025 set to be confirmed as the third-hottest record.
US emissions fell in 2024 by 0.5 per cent and in 2023 by 3.5 per cent, after the economy rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic and emissions rose in both 2021 and 2022, by 6.3 per cent and 1.2 per cent respectively.
Building emissions rose 6.8 per cent, followed by the power sector where emissions increased by 3.8 per cent, the report found.
“Weather is bumpy year-to-year – we tend to see building emissions bump around like this due to higher fuel use for heating,” Rhodium Group analyst and the report’s co-author Michael Gaffney told AFP.
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