Given the never-ending apocalyptic rhetoric from environmentalists, one might believe that U.S. air quality is declining in the face of growing fossill-fuel production and consumption. But as the Environmental Protection Agency recently reported, air quality is getting better and better. For decades, there has been a positive correlation between urban air quality and oil, gas, and coal activity.
Emissions of each of the six criteria pollutants have dropped significantly in recent years, continuing a decades-old trend. Since 1970, total emissions of carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ground-level ozone, and particulate matter have fallen 72 percent.
Meanwhile, since 1970, U.S. oil consumption has increased 26 percent, natural gas 21 percent, and coal70 percent. Total energy consumption has risen 47 percent.
Overall, the two-thirds improvement in urban air quality in the last forty-two years has occurred whenGDP increased 219 percent, travelled vehicle-miles rose 165 percent, and population grew by one-third.
And air-quality improvement has remained strong in recent years, refuting any argument that the positive trend is slowing or about to be reversed.
Natural Gas Takeoff
The recent takeoff in domestic natural gas production is fueling a gas-for-coal substitution in power-plant markets that promises continuing air-quality improvement. Compared to gas plants, coal plants in 2010 emitted 90 times more sulfur dioxide and five times the nitrogen oxide per unit of electricity. And unlike many other fuel sources, natural gas doesn’t release byproducts like ashes and odors that degrade our air quality.
Prior to the shale revolution, natural was also one of the priciest fuel sources. But novel drilling techniques, commonly known as fracking, have unlocked vast new reserves previously trapped inside shale rock and buried deep beneath the surface of the Earth. In the Marcellus Shale alone, which stretches through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York there’s enough natural gas to power every natural-gas-burning device in the United States for 20 years.
Not surprisingly, and abetted by the Obama Administration’s war on coal, power companies have started replacing coal-fired plants with advanced, natural gas plants. Coal, which once supplied the United States with half its electricity supply, is losing market share to natural gas. Indeed, natural gas now produces about 30 percent of U.S. electricity and that percentage is rising.
Coal: Good News Too
Still, more efficient, cleaner coal plants are a neglected environmental story. These plants have reduced emissions via flue gas desulfurization, selective catalytic reducers, fabric filters, dry sorbent injections, and other new pollution-control technologies.
Developing economies are also using such technologies to bring down coal-related emissions. In fact, asreported recently in the New York Times, China is constructing a series of plants that are actually cleaner than any now operating in the United States.
And the abundant and reliable energy provided by coal has enabled emerging economies to betterprotect themselves against environmental dangers. Prosperity has translated into new safety technologies like water purification plants, irrigation systems, indoor plumbing, and smoke-free electric stoves. Energy from coal alone has contributed to the two-billion-person increase in the number of people with clean drinking waters in recent decades.
Cleaner Engines
Air emissions from motor vehicles, both from cleaner gasoline and diesel fuel and from improved engine technology, has been summarized by the EPA:
- Compared to 1970 vehicle models, new cars, SUVs and pickup trucks are roughly 99 percent cleaner for common pollutants (hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particle emissions).
- New heavy-duty trucks and buses are roughly 99 percent cleaner than 1970 models.
- New nonroad engines — such as those used in forklifts and tractors — are meeting standards similar to those for on-road vehicles
- By the 2014 and 2015 model years, new locomotives will be 90 percent cleaner than pre-regulation locomotives.
- New commercial marine vessels (non-ocean-going) are 90 percent cleaner for particle emissions than in 1970.
- Clean Air Act and international standards for ocean-going vessel emissions and fuels are reducing emissions from ocean-going vessels as well.
- Sulfur in gasoline has been reduced by 90 percent, and sulfur in diesel fuel has been reduced by 99 percent, from pre-regulation levels.
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