{"id":80,"date":"2007-04-26T16:07:28","date_gmt":"2007-04-26T21:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2007\/04\/26\/slicing-the-greenhouse-gas-pie-where-from\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T15:59:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T20:59:37","slug":"slicing-the-greenhouse-gas-pie-where-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2007\/04\/26\/slicing-the-greenhouse-gas-pie-where-from\/","title":{"rendered":"Slicing the greenhouse gas pie: Where from?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the previous post, I described <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2007\/04\/26\/slicing-the-greenhouse-gas-pie-what-gases\/\" data-wplink-edit=\"true\">which gases are important and what activities they come from<\/a>. But we can also learn a lot by looking at regional patterns in how those gases are emitted.<\/p>\n<p>For example, most deforestation occurs in poor tropical countries (in fact, in many of these countries deforestation is a much larger source of CO<sub>2<\/sub> than fossil fuel use). In contrast, most CO<sub>2<\/sub> emissions from fossil fuel use come from the developed countries.<\/p>\n<p>As I described in an earlier post, the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2007\/03\/21\/us_emissions\/\">U.S. is the largest emitter in the world<\/a>, both today and historically. Next let&#8217;s take a closer look at the U.S. greenhouse gas pie.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->As one might expect in a developed country, virtually all our CO<sub>2<\/sub> emissions come from burning fossil fuels. We use relatively more natural gas than the rest of the world \u2013 which is good because <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2007\/04\/24\/should-we-fill-our-gas-tanks-with-coal\/\">natural gas is the cleanest of the fossil fuels<\/a>. The percentages are: about 40 percent coal, about 40 percent petroleum, and about 20 percent natural gas. Worldwide, deforestation is a net source of CO<sub>2<\/sub>, but in the U.S., forests and urban trees are growing. They are taking CO<sub>2<\/sub> out of the atmosphere and storing it. That growth cancels out about 11 percent of U.S. fossil fuel emissions.<\/p>\n<p>Forty percent of our country&#8217;s CO<sub>2<\/sub> emissions come from electricity generation. Half of our electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, which produce 32 percent of America&#8217;s CO<sub>2<\/sub> emissions. Because of that, utilities will play a huge role in our fight against global warming, but everyone will need to cut emissions because every sector contributes to greenhouse gas pollution:<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>U S. greenhouse gas pie:<\/strong> Sliced by economic sector<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It is interesting to note that residential and commercial emissions \u2013 coming from our homes and offices \u2013 together make up almost 40 percent of our emissions. What the chart doesn&#8217;t show is that commercial and residential emissions are growing about twice as fast as the overall average.<\/p>\n<p>These statistics suggest that there are multiple sources to worry about in our fight against global warming. Clearly, coal is a major challenge \u2013 almost one-third of our emissions come from coal-fired power plants. But the good news is that there are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.environmentaldefense.org\/article.cfm?contentID=5434&amp;campaign=583\">clean coal technologies<\/a> that would allow us to use our huge coal reserves without harming the climate.<\/p>\n<p>Transportation is another biggie \u2013 also about one-third of our emissions. Here again <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fightglobalwarming.com\/page.cfm?tagID=268\">there are solutions<\/a> \u2013 more <a href=\"http:\/\/autos.yahoo.com\/green_center\/;_ylt=ArDjWPEf7136fLZp9GvQvykEc78F;_ylv=3\">fuel efficient cars<\/a> come to mind. And for commercial and residential sectors, building green buildings and improving the efficiency of our existing ones will help stem the flow of greenhouse emissions.<\/p>\n<p>As I&#8217;ve said before, it&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2007\/03\/28\/green_technologies\/\">not going to be one silver bullet<\/a>; the solution is going to be more like silver buckshot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the previous post, I described which gases are important and what activities they come from. But we can also learn a lot by looking at regional patterns in how those gases are emitted. For example, most deforestation occurs in poor tropical countries (in fact, in many of these countries deforestation is a much larger &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[202],"tags":[],"coauthors":[108036],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-greenhouse-gas-emissions"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Slicing the greenhouse gas pie: Where from? - Climate 411<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2007\/04\/26\/slicing-the-greenhouse-gas-pie-where-from\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Slicing the greenhouse gas pie: Where from? - Climate 411\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the previous post, I described which gases are important and what activities they come from. 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