Bitter cold and a chill wind inevitably mean the heat gets cranked up inside. And as the polar vortex parked itself over Canada and the northeastern U.S. to end 2013, that’s what people did.
Largely as a result of trying to keep warm from that Arctic chill, carbon dioxide emitted from burning energy in the U.S. increased 2.5 percent in 2013 over the previous year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s annual CO2 emissions report, released Tuesday.
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Only three other years since 1990 have seen a greater annual increase in energy-related CO2 emissions — 1996, 2000 and 2010.
The spike in emissions from burning energy last year had less to do with the United States reversing a trend in declining CO2 emissions than it did with 2012 being unusually warm — the warmest year on record, in fact.
“2012 was so warm, and then 2013 started returning to normal on its way to a chilly winter when you got to the end of the year,” EIA analyst Perry Lindstrom told Climate Central.
Even though the United States burned through more natural gas, coal and home heating fuel to stay toasty last year, CO2 emissions related to energy consumption were still lower than they were earlier in the decade when emissions peaked in 2007.
Here’s how the numbers break down: Energy-related CO2 emissions totaled 5.9 billion metric tons in 2005, peaking at more than 6 billion in 2007 and in 2012 dropped to nearly 5.3 billion tons, their lowest level in 18 years. In 2013, they spiked to nearly 5.4 billion tons.
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