Energy consultant Arthur D Little, in the latest in its ‘Viewpoint’ series of briefings, argues that, geo-political implications aside, president Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement will have no significant impact on emissions reduction targets from the US power sector.
The Obama Administration approved the Paris deal in September 2016. The USA’s target for greenhouse gas emission reductions currently stands at 26 to 28% below 2005 levels by 2025. The main federal energy policy measure to deliver this decrease in carbon was Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP), which sought to reduce emissions from the power sector by 30% by 2030.
With the Trump Administration now in the White House, says the report’s author Yvonne Fuller, the CPP is unlikely to be implemented, and US energy policy will be replaced with the “America First Energy Plan”. It is only be a high-level summary at this stage but the focus has clearly shifted away from low carbon and towards low cost supply and utilising domestic energy sources, specifically coal, shale oil and shale gas.
Last month energy consultant Yvonne Fuller published research under the heading ‘America First: carbon emissions go last? `– potential impact of president Trump’s “America first energy plan” on the power sector’ which argues that that despite the president’s political grandstanding and promised ‘return of coal jobs,’ economic factors have already shifted the US power sector’s medium-term energy outlook, and the growth of lower emission options like gas and renewables will continue to make up a bigger part of the US energy mix. The result is that even without the commitments to honour the Paris agreement we are seeing from cities and corporations, the US is on track to reduce emissions in line with the agreements standards.
The full briefing can be read at < http://www.adlittle.com/downloads/tx_adlreports/ADL_Low_Carbon_2017.pdf>
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