Despite coal-power output in the US falling to its lowest level in nearly 60 years, the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions fell by just 0.2% in 2024, according to new research from the Rhodium Group.
Increases in electricity demand and continued growth in transport emissions led to US emissions remaining broadly “unchanged”, while the economy grew by 2.7%, the New York-based research group finds.
The US is the world’s second-largest annual emitter, has very high per-capita emissions and by far the greatest historical responsibility for current warming.
Even though emissions remained unchanged from a year earlier, they were still 8% below pre-pandemic levels in 2024 and remained about 20% below 2005 levels, Rhodium notes.
While the pace of decarbonisation slowed in 2024, after a reduction of 1.9% in 2023, new policies and regulations introduced under the Biden administration were expected to see this accelerate in the coming years, Rhodium says.
However, it notes that this progress could now be at risk from the incoming presidency of Donald Trump. Trump has repeatedly pledged to roll back a range of environmental policies brought in by his predecessor Joe Biden.
Solar and wind overtake coal
Renewable energy in the US grew in 2024, with the combined output from solar and wind surpassing coal in the electricity mix for the first time ever, according to Rhodium.
Together, solar and wind made up 16% of the electricity mix in 2024, up nearly two percentage points from 2023. Solar generation grew by 32% and wind by 7%, both outpacing the 4% growth in gas generation, the report notes.
Solar had a record-setting year in 2024, accounting for 64% of all new electricity-generating capacity added to the US grid in Q3, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
However, the rollout of wind generation was hit by notable challenges, including increased costs and project siting difficulties.
Gas-fired electricity generation remained the single-largest source in the US by far, producing a record 1,782 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2024, some 43% of the total.
Nuclear was the second-largest, as shown in the figure below. It generated 781TWh, some 19% of the total, just ahead of the combined output of wind and solar, as well as coal.
The growth of wind and solar helped ensure that the generation mix was “slightly cleaner” in 2024, even though demand for electricity rose by 3%, says Rhodium.
Buildings represented the biggest increase in demand for electricity, where a 10% growth in “cooling degree days” – a measure of how hot the temperature is – drove up summer electricity use. (The US saw record-breaking heatwaves across the year, with the summer of 2024 the hottest on record, the Guardian reported.)
After buildings, industry ranked second and commercial buildings third as the biggest sources of increased electricity demand.
There has been a lot of media focus on artificial intelligence (AI) driving electricity demand growth. Moreover, a Department of Energy-commissioned study in December found that US data centre power demand could nearly triple within four years, consuming as much as 12% of the country’s electricity by 2028.
However, Rhodium notes that data centres were only a small source of demand growth in 2024, representing just a fraction of the third biggest source of electricity demand.
In 2024, the additional power demand was met by gas, wind and solar, while coal continued to decline, dropping one percentage point to 16% of the electricity mix.
In absolute terms, coal provided as much power in 2024 as it did in 1967 when Lyndon Baines Johnson was the 36th president of the US, the Vietnam War was raging and Elvis Presley married Priscilla Ann Beaulieu in Las Vegas.
Gas remained the single largest source of power in the US in 2024, accounting for 43% of the total (1 percentage point higher than in 2023), notes Rhodium.
This growth – to meet increased demand – offset the reduction in coal generation and emissions from the power sector increased by 0.2% (3m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, MtCO2e) in 2024.
Alongside the increase in renewable energy, the US saw record-high investment in the manufacturing and deployment of clean technologies last year, Rhodium says.
For example, investment in clean technologies accounted for 5% of total private investment in structures, equipment and durable consumer goods in the third quarter of last year, according to the latest data from the Clean Investment Monitor.
Crude oil production was up by 2.4% in 2024, while gas production fell by 0.6%, according to Rhodium. This was a slightly bigger drop in gas production than in 2020 when the Covid pandemic hit, as producers reacted to lower prices by drilling fewer new wells and curtailing production, it adds.
The research estimates that oil and gas systems released around 10% less methane per unit of output in 2024 than in 2022, due to cleaner production practices as well as state and federal regulations.
As such, cleaning up oil and gas production led to a 3.7% drop in emissions from the sector, some 11MtCOe relative to 2023.
Hurricanes hit industrial emissions
Industrial emissions fell in 2024 due to low manufacturing output, Rhodium finds. Across the year, the sector’s emissions fell by 1.8%, or 22MtCO2e, from 2023.
Chemicals, computers and electronics, and paper production grew in 2024, but declines in food and beverages, mining and machinery offset these gains, it says.
This included historically low coal mining activity, which fell by 12% in 2024 to its lowest level in decades due to demand falling, as coal power plants retire and are replaced by renewables and gas, as noted in the section above.
One factor in declining industrial output was extreme weather. Along with the impact of labour disruption on production, Hurricanes Beryl, Milton and Helene also all hit manufacturing output, notes Rhodium.
Transport remained the highest-emitting sector in the US, with a 0.8% increase in emissions driven by post-pandemic rebounds in jet fuel and petrol consumption, according to Rhodium.
Emissions from transport, industry and buildings have remained relatively steady in recent decades, whereas the power sector has seen steady declines, as shown in the figure below.
“Available seat miles” – a metric used to quantify air travel – set a new record in 2024, up 6% year-on-year in the first three quarters of the year, according to Rhodium.
There was also “record-high road activity” the report notes, with a 1% increase in road traffic volumes up to October. As such, petrol consumption increased, although diesel continued to fall, dropping close to 2020 levels.
Despite these increases in transportation activity, emissions from the sector still remain 2.%% below 2019 levels.
Building sector emissions increased by 0.4% due to elevated fuel use, Rhodium adds.
Looking ahead
The “modest 2024 decline underscores the urgency of accelerating decarbonisation in all sectors” concludes Rhodium, in particular with the imminent change in US government.
Currently, the US is not on track to meet either its 2030 Paris Agreement target of a 50-52% reduction in emissions relative to 2005 levels or its newly set 2035 goal of a 61-66% reduction.
To bridge the gap between the current US trajectory and its stated goals would require an average emissions reduction of 7.6% every year from 2025 through to 2030, says Rhodium. This would be more than two-thirds of the drop seen as a result of Covid lockdowns in 2020.
Analysts, including Rhodium, have predicted that the combined impact of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations on vehicles and power plants will increase the pace of emissions reductions in the future.
There is already some evidence of this, with the most recent data from Clean Investment Monitor suggesting that clean energy and transportation investment could reach a high of $71bn in the third quarter of 2024.
This would cap the “nearly unbroken streak of quarter-on-quarter growth since the IRA’s passage, with clean investment now accounting for a record 5% of total US private investment”, notes Rhodium.
However, whether the rate of emissions reduction actually accelerates is heavily dependent on the extent to which the incoming Trump administration and the Republican Congress rollback and repeal EPA regulations and energy and tax policies brought in or expanded through the IRA.
Trump has repeatedly promised to pull back climate policies, saying in September 2024 that “to further defeat inflation, my plan will terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam” in reference to the IRA, according to Politico.
In December, Rhoiodum published a separate piece of research dubbed: “Trump 2.0: What’s in Store for US Energy and Climate?” It explored a number of potential pathways the Trump administration could pursue when he takes office on 20 January, including one called “rollbacks and repeal”.
This pathway would see the pace of US decarbonisation slow significantly, leaving emissions at 24-40% below 2005 levels in 2035. This is equivalent to roughly an additional 1bn tonnes of CO2e in 2035 in each emissions scenario explored by Rhodium.
Rolling back regulations alone could lead to a 270-470MtCO2e increase in emissions by 2035, it adds. This would represent 25-50% of the total emissions increase under the full “rollbacks and repeal” pathway.
Analysis by Carbon Brief in March 2024 found that Trump winning November’s presidential election could lead to a cumulative additional 4bn tonnes of US emissions by 2030, compared to under Bidens’s plans.
Ben King, co-author of the preliminary emissions analysis and Trump 2.0 note, and an associate director in Rhodium Group’s energy and climate practice, tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s not clear what precise policy actions the Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress will take, but we analysed the potential impacts of two major policy changes: rolling back major climate regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and repealing the energy and tax policies that were enhanced and expanded through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Rolling back EPA climate regulations alone – which the Trump administration could pursue unilaterally, though not immediately – could increase greenhouse gas emissions by 270-470MtCO2e in 2035.
“A more extreme policy pathway, rolling back EPA regulations and immediately repealing the energy and tax components of the IRA – which would require congressional approval – could increase emissions by nearly 1GtCO2e in 2035.”
Rhodium concludes its analysis of the US’s emissions in 2024 by noting that it will be watching developments around rolling back and repealing climate policies “closely”.
The post US emissions ‘unchanged’ in 2024 despite coal power at lowest level since 1967 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
US emissions ‘unchanged’ in 2024 despite coal power at lowest level since 1967
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The plan called for China to cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 17% from 2026 to 2030, which “may allow for continued increase in emissions given the rate of GDP growth”, reported Reuters. The newswire added that the plan also had targets to reach peak coal in the next five years and replace 30m tonnes per year of coal with renewables.
ACTIVE YET PRUDENT: Bloomberg described the new plan as “cautious”, stating that it “frustrat[es] hopes for tighter policy that would drive the nation to peak carbon emissions well before president Xi Jinping’s 2030 deadline”. Carbon Brief has just published an in-depth analysis of the plan. China Daily reported that the strategy “highlights measures to promote the climate targets of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030”, which China said it would work towards “actively yet prudently”.
Around the world
- EU RULES: The European Commission has proposed new “made in Europe” rules to support domestic low-carbon industries, “against fierce competition from China”, reported Agence France-Presse. Carbon Brief examined what it means for climate efforts.
- RECORD HEAT: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there is a 50-60% chance that the El Niño weather pattern could return this year, amplifying the effect of global warming and potentially driving temperatures to “record highs”, according to Euronews.