By Benjamin Storrow
In total, U.S. clean energy spending adds up to around $900 billion over the next 10 years, said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at New York University. How that money is spent is one of the big trends to watch in 2023.
“The fact the U.S. has entered this clean energy race has provided a massive global jolt to the global economy,” he said.
Before that influx of funds, countries were already slowing down the rate of their emissions increase. The first decade of the 2000s saw emissions grow an average of 3 percent annually. That has slowed to 0.5 percent per year over the last decade, according to the Global Carbon Project. The decrease coincided with a fall in coal generation in the U.S. and Europe and suggests a greener world economy.
“The rich economies of the world have decoupled economic growth from CO2 emissions,” Wagner said.
Yet Wagner was quick to note that total emissions are still going up. China and India, which remain reliant on coal, continue to see their greenhouse gas output grow. And it’s not as if the U.S. and Europe have suddenly ditched fossil fuels.
A recent analysis of 2021 emissions by the Rhodium Group shows the economic rebound after pandemic lockdowns was particularly carbon intensive, with fossil fuel demand growing faster than gross domestic product in the U.S. and Europe.
“None of this is a success in the sense that emissions are going down, how cool,” Wagner said. “It means we are adding less and less to the atmosphere, but we’re still adding.”
Quoted in: “Will Global Emissions Plateau in 2023? Four Trends to Watch” by Benjamin Storrow/E&E News, Scientific American (6 January 2023).