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1 David Austin & Ron Gecan, CBO's Benchmark Projection of Greenhouse Gas Emissions 1 (November 26, 2024)

handle is hein.congrec/cbobnmrk0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Greenhouse gases (GHGs) accumulate in the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned to produce energy; they also accumulate as a result of industrial processes and activities such as deforestation and agriculture. GHGs, which include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other (mainly fluorinated) gases, vary in their contributions to atmospheric warming: They remain in the atmosphere for different lengths of time and cause different amounts of warming while they are present. So that GHGs can be compared on a common basis, emissions are often measured in carbon dioxide equiv- alent units (CO2e), or the amount of CO2 that would cause the same amount of warming over a given period (typically a century). The Congressional Budget Office maintains a 10-year benchmark projection of annual GHG emissions to estimate the effects that certain GHG emissions policies, such as setting a price on those emissions, would have on the federal budget. This report presents CBO's most recent projection of GHG emissions. According to that projection, GHG emissions in the United States, mea- sured in CO2e, decline by about 8 percent from 2025 to 2034. That decline is driven by a projected decrease of 15 percent in energy-related emissions of CO2, partially offset by an increase of 9 percent in other, non-energy- related emissions. How CBO Constructs Its Benchmark Projection of Greenhouse Gas Emissions CBO uses information from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to construct its benchmark pro- jection of GHG emissions. The projection is updated annually, following the release of EPA's Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks and EIA's Annual Energy Outlook.1 EPA's inventory is a detailed accounting of annual emissions, including subtotals by economic sector and type of greenhouse gas. Because of the time required to gather data and produce estimates, EPA's most recent inventory, released in 2024, reports historical GHG emissions through 2022. EIA's outlook provides long-term projections of U.S. energy markets, including energy-related emissions of CO2 by economic sector, most recently through 2050. CBO constructs its GHG emissions benchmark as follows: For CO2 emissions from energy use, CBO applies EIA's projected emissions growth rates, which are sector specific, to the corresponding emissions totals for the latest year in EPA's inventory. Because EIA does not provide its projections of non-energy-related GHGs in its outlook, CBO uses its own growth rates, which it developed from EIA's projection model.2 CBO also maintains a 30-year projection by extrapolating from EIA's projections beyond 2050. If future laws or administrative actions that would nota- bly affect emissions were adopted after CBO's annual update, the agency would revise its benchmark to reflect the expected effects of those changes. 1. Environmental Protection Agency, Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2022, EPA 430- R-24-004 (April 2024), https://tinyurl.com/3ftkt32a; and Energy Information Administration, AnnualEnergy Outlook 2023 (March 2023), www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo. EIA did not publish an outlook in 2024; it plans to resume annual publication in 2025. 2. EIA uses its publicly available National Energy Modeling System model, which it revises each year, to make projections in support of its Annual Energy Outlook. See Energy Information Administration, The National Energy Modeling System: An Overview (May 2023), https://tinyurl.com/567yvatp. Notes: All years referred to in this report are calendar years. Numbers in the text and table may not add up to totals because of rounding.

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