Analysis: Emissions fell when oil got expensive

There’s a hidden message in the good news that New Hampshire lowered its carbon emissions by a hefty 13 percent between 2004 and 2007, but it’s not exactly an unexpected message: Money talks.

The state’s drop in emissions occurred pre-recession, when Hummers strode the highways and power-hungry factories ran three shifts, and when the federal government barely gave lip service to alternative energy and New Hampshire’s innovative cap-and-trade and renewable-energy credit programs were just babes in arms.

So if a bad economy or “green” policies didn’t cause that decline in greenhouse gas, what did?

The cost of oil.

As you’ll recall, oil went from $40 a barrel in 2004 to $100-plus by the end of 2007, leading to $4-a-gallon gasoline. When it got expensive, we all drove a little less and burned more firewood or wood pellets instead of heating oil; more importantly, businesses and generators of electricity searched for alternative fuel sources.

“The difference is mostly switching from oil to fuels that have lower emissions,” said Jessica O’Hare, program associate for Environment New Hampshire, which presented the information as part of a report called “Too Much Pollution.”

The group touts the data as evidence that it won’t be as difficult or as painful as many people fear to make the sharp cuts in greenhouse gases that most scientists say are needed to lessen the effect of global climate change.

“This suggests that getting the savings suggested by scientists, which are aggressive, is achievable,” said Jim Rubens, of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “This is doable.”

The data tells the tale. From 2004 to 2007, New Hampshire’s carbon emissions from the burning of oil fell by 21.4 percent.

No other state came close to that sort of decline, even neighboring states that also have a similar mix of power sources and use of home heating oil: Massachusetts’ oil emissions fell 13 percent, Maine’s fell 10 percent and Vermont’s fell 8 percent.

This decline is a big deal for New Hampshire, because oil is the cause of roughly 60 percent of our carbon emissions – well over twice the amount produced by that other greenhouse-gas villain, coal.

In fact, between 2004 and 2007, the amount of carbon emitted by coal in New Hampshire actually went up 3.3 percent, probably due to its use by PSNH in power plants. Emissions from natural gas – which as fossil fuels go is benign in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions – were flat.

The bulk of the oil savings, the report indicated, was a switch by PSNH and other power companies away from oil when they powered their generators: In New Hampshire, carbon dioxide emissions from burning oil for electricity dropped by 83 percent during the period.

And while we did quite well, New Hampshire isn’t alone: More than one-third of the states succeeded in cutting pollution from 2004 to 2007, the report said.

However, the news about the emissions has a flip side, because money talks for both good and bad.

In other words, fast reductions in carbon emissions caused by a rise in oil prices can be just as quickly undone when oil’s prices fall, as they have in the past two years.

New Hampshire’s carbon emissions have probably continued to decline since 2007 because the recession has slashed energy use, and thus emissions, worldwide, but if oil stays at the current price when the economy recovers, then fossil fuel emissions could spike again.

That is why groups like Environment New Hampshire and the Union of Concerned Scientists support various pieces of legislation and regulation designed to make it more expensive or difficult to increase fossil-fuel usage down the road.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the 10-state cap-and-trade program on carbon emissions that New Hampshire is part of, is one of those. Another is the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, a proposed U.S. Senate bill that would mandate 20 percent cuts in the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020. The plan has drawn opposition from various business and energy groups, who say it is too expensive and unwieldy.

Environmental groups obviously hope that handing out some good news about emissions will make it easier to keep improvements intact.

“The transition to clean energy is a marathon, and we’ve just laced up our sneakers,” said O’Hare.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-5831 or dbrooks@nashuatelegraph.com.