More coal-fired plants will open in Germany in 2013 than have in two decades, greenhouse gases increased 1.6% in Germany in 2012-Bloomberg. US CO2 dropped 13% since 2007, 4% in 2012 alone

2/27/13, "Germany to Add Most Coal-Fired Plants in Two Decades, IWR Says," Bloomberg, Stefan Nocola

"Germany will this year start up more coal-fired power stations than at any time in the past 20 years as the country advances a plan to exit nuclear energy by 2022.

New coal plants with about 5,300 megawatts of capacity will start generating power this year, the Muenster-based IWR renewable energy institute said in an e-mailed statement today, citing data from the German regulator. About 1,000 megawatts of coal-fired capacity are expected to come offline, it said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who shut Germany’s oldest atomic reactors two years ago in response to the Fukushima disaster in Japan, is seeking to replace the remaining nuclear plants with renewable generators and efficient fossil-fired stations. 

Greenhouse gas emissions in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, rose 1.6 percent last year as more coal was burned to generate power, the Environment Ministry said two days ago. 

“The growth in renewables and the decline in power consumption have already fully bridged the gap opened by the shutdowns of the eight nuclear reactors in 2011,” Norbert Allnoch, head of the IWR, said in today’s statement." via Tom Nelson

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US CO2 emissions have dropped 13% in past 5 yrs., down 4% in 2012 alone:

2/7/13, "U.S. Carbon Emissions Dip To 1994 Levels," Russell McLendon, Mother Nature Network via Forbes

"Not since 1994 have U.S. CO2 emissions been as low as they were in 2012, according to a new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Output of the heat-trapping gas fell 13 percent in the past five years, putting the country well on its way to meeting President Obama’s target of cutting emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. By the end of last year, U.S. CO2 emissions were already down 10.5 percent from the 2005 baseline....

Coal represented just 18.1 percent of all U.S. power sources in 2012, down from 22.5 percent in 2007."...

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No other country matched US 2012 CO2 reduction:

1/4/13, “An American Triumph: US Carbon Emissions In 2012 Fall 4% & 12% From Peak Level In 2007,” John Hanger.blogspot.com

Through September 2012, carbon emissions were "down every month in 2012, when compared to each of the first 9 months of 2011 and 2010. No other country matches that record.  www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec12_3.pdf/sec12_3.pdf/."







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