Despite global gains in clean power, the planet is heating up. A lot. The last eight years were the hottest ever recorded, with 2016 marking the warmest of them all, climate researchers reported this week. At the same time, greenhouse gas emissions grew by 1.3 percent last year in the United States, even as carbon-free energy surpassed coal power for the first time in over half a century (hydropower outpaced coal 60 years ago), according to a report out today by the Rhodium Group. While that rise is relatively modest compared with a 6.5 percent spike in carbon emissions that happened in 2021, it leaves the U.S. further adrift from its commitments under the Paris climate accord, writes POLITICO’s E&E News reporter Benjamin Storrow. President Joe Biden has pledged to cut emissions 50 to 52 percent by the end of the decade, compared with 2005 levels — a steep reduction from today’s numbers. Planet-warming pollution is now just 15.5 percent below 2005 levels, the Rhodium report found. During a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico today, Biden doubled down on his goals, saying the U.S. “should be the clean energy powerhouse of the world” and is strengthening its supply chains to accomplish that. Passage of the president’s landmark climate bill last year is expected to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels, as federal clean energy tax credits increase the adoption of renewable energy technologies. But the challenges remain significant. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from buildings grew 6 percent last year, while planet-warming pollution from transportation and industry increased by slightly more than 1 percent. Those sectors of the economy have historically proven difficult to green. The world has managed to tackle another planetary woe. Scientists have determined that the Earth’s protective ozone layer is slowly but surely on the mend, more than 35 years after all countries agreed to stop producing the chemicals that were eroding it. A full recovery is predicted by 2045, according to the United Nations.
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