Emissions Fell in 2009, Showing Impact Of Recession

By JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON — Greenhouse gas emissions in the United States declined in 2009 for the second consecutive year, reflecting the impact of the recession on industrial production and overall energy use, the federal government reported on Wednesday.

Emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases fell 6 percent in 2009 and were at their lowest level since 1995, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which produces the annual inventory of emissions. The agency attributed the decline to the economic slowdown and a shift from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas to produce electricity as the price of natural gas has declined.

Overall emissions in the United States have risen by 7.4 percent since 1990, an annual average of 0.4 percent, the agency reported. Even as the American population has grown, emissions per capita have fallen, and the rate of emissions relative to the size of the economy — sometimes known as carbon intensity — has dropped even more sharply.

Total emissions of greenhouse gases were 5.5 billion metric tons in 2009, down from 5.92 billion in 2008 and 6.12 billion in 2007, the last pre-recession year. The United States is the second-largest source of such heat-trapping gases, after China.

Greenhouse gas emissions declined most heavily in the industrial and transportation sectors in 2008 and 2009, while there was virtually no year-to-year change in emissions from commercial and residential buildings and from agriculture.

The trend, while reflecting the weak economy, is in part encouraging news to President Obama, who has pledged to the United Nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. The figures released on Wednesday indicated that the country was more than halfway to that goal.

But as the economy recovers, the country will have to take steps to continue the decline of emissions, including switching to cleaner fuels, increasing production of renewable energy, making transportation more efficient and reducing emissions from power plants, refineries and factories. Those steps, whether achieved by regulation or legislation, have proved highly controversial, and Mr. Obama has struggled to persuade Congress to move on the scale or at the pace needed to fulfill his promise.