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Carbon Intensity is Falling in Industrial, Electric Power Sectors (arstechnica.com)
Over the last seven years, the electrical power sector has gone from being one of the most carbon-emitting sectors of the American economy per unit of fuel consumed to one of the least carbon-emitting sectors. From a report on ArsTechnica: That's according to new data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Despite the good news, the EIA's numbers show that, since 1975, the carbon emissions of the US transportation sector per unit of fuel used has hardly changed at all. The EIA measured relative emissions across the US economy as "carbon intensity -- an average of the amount of carbon any sector gives off as it consumes different kinds of fuel. The measurements were applied to five sectors of the US economy: transportation, commercial, residential, electric, and industrial.
Of course it has fallen. Replacing coal with nat gas generation (which is by far the biggest factor), tends to do that.
The only reason why it's falling is because they count renewables as "fuel". So of course per unit of "fuel" consumed (and remember, solar radiation count as "fuel"), they emit less CO2. It doesn't mean the process of CO2 emitting thermal power plants actually improved.
Actually, it isn't a retarded measure, you just need to understand what it is sayig. Basically it says that our advances in internal combustion technology have made a negligible difference in the amount of carbon emitted while burning petroleum products, or in application terms, technology woun't make petroleum based ICEs much cleaner.
In contrast the electrical generation industry has been changing fuels over the same period of time, and has indeed made carbon production improvements.
The take away is that to make a dent in carbon pollution from cars and trucks they need to burn different fuels, not keep tweaking the long tail of internal combustion efficiency.
I would be interested in seeing the same sort of measure of the other pollutants out our tailpipes, I think the reductions of evaporative loses and the requirement of catalytic convertors has probably made significant reductions of some other pollutants per unit of fuel used.
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
"Per unit of fuel used"
I am still stuck on how they totally ignore that we went from 8 mpg to 40 mpg in that time. I wonder if that reduced emissions at all? Talk about fudging the numbers. Pollution per person per mile has plummeted!
Basically it says that our advances in internal combustion technology have made a negligible difference in the amount of carbon emitted
That is because as fuel efficiency has improved, instead of using less fuel, people have bought BIGGER VEHICLES.
I am waiting for the civilian version of the M1 Abrams.