Greenhouse emissions in US witness largest dip since World War II

Greenhouse emissions in the United States fell by over 10.3 per cent in 2020, marking the largest drop drop after World War II.

A report released by the Rhodium Group on Tuesday shed light on how coronavirus impacted the US economy. The US remains the hardest-hit by COVID-19, with big sectors like transportation, power, industry the worst affected. The drop in emissions was much larger than what was seen during the 2009 recession, when emissions lid by 6.3 per cent.

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The drop implies that the US would be able to outperform the pledge it had made as part of the Copenhagen climate accord to reduce emissions by 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020.

Owing to the economic shutdown caused by coronavirus, emissions reportedly dropped by 21.5 per cent, when compared to 2005.

Even then, the authors of the report warned against perceiving it as a guarantee that the country would be able to meet its ambitious pledge under the Paris climate agreement, which requires US to cut emissions 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2025.

Incumbent President Donald Trump had withdrawn the US from the Paris Accord. But President-elect Joe Biden is expected to rejoin the accord, once he takes charge of the presidential duties beginning January 20.

Biden intends to carve out to a path to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. But before that, he needs to announce plans for reducing emissions by 2030.

"With coronavirus vaccines now in distribution, we expect economic activity to pick up again in 2021, but without meaningful structural changes in the carbon intensity of the US economy, emissions will likely rise again as well," the report said.

Just in the transportation sector, emissions dropped by 14.7 per cent as compared to 2019 levels. This was largely owing to the restrictions on travel put in place by the pandemic.