NEW YORK, June 25 (Reuters) - Power plants in the U.S.
Northeast slashed carbon dioxide emissions during the first
quarter of 2009 as they switched to burning clean, cheap
natural gas instead of coal, according to report issued on
Thursday.
Cheap natural gas prices were more responsible for the
emissions cut than the recession, according to the report,
released on Thursday by nonprofit group Environment Northeast.
Prices for U.S. natural gas have fallen steadily from a
peak over $13 per million British thermal units last July to
under $4 per mmBtu as excess production, slumping demand and
increased imports push storage fields to their limits.
The report said carbon dioxide emissions from power plants
in the 10 Northeast states in the Regional Greenhouse Gas
Initiative, the country's first regional market to regulate
emissions of the gas, fell about 10 percent during the first
quarter 2009 from the same quarter in 2008.
In 2008 annual emissions from power plants in the 10 states
were 19 percent below the RGGI cap of 188 million tons, the
report said.
"Energy efficiency investments and the economic downturn
are also contributing to reduced energy consumption, although
lower energy consumption does not appear to be as large a
contributor to declining emissions as increased use of low-or
no-carbon fuels," the report said.
Derek Murrow, the director of policy analysis at
Environment Northeast, said emissions for later in 2009 could
still go up if the summer gets hot and increases
air-conditioning demand.
But he said the unexpected drop in emissions can be a
lesson to U.S. lawmakers hoping to regulate greenhouse gases
that such plans "can often be significantly cheaper to
implement than originally forecast."
Burning natural gas in power plants emits about half as
much of the planet-warming gas carbon dioxide for the same
amount of electricity output as burning coal does.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by David Gregorio)
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