Carbon Rollercoaster

A Historical Analysis of Decarbonization in the United States

Datos Bibliográficos

ID14855652
AutoresKaren Clay (0000-0003-3978-6656, Karen Clay is Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts. .), Akshaya Jha (0000-0001-6393-5397, Akshaya Jha is Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy, both at Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts. .), Joshua Lewis (0000-0002-9114-2711, Joshua Lewis is Associate Professor in Economics, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada. .), Edson Severnini (0000-0002-0166-4250, Edson Severnini is Associate Professor of Economics and Core Faculty of the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts, and Visiting Professor of Economics at Nova School of Business and Economics, Lisbon, Portugal; Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts. .)
Año2025
Volumen39
Número3
Páginas171-192
Fecha de publicación2025-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of Economic Perspectives (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0895-3309 • E-ISSN: 1944-7965
EditorialAmerican Economic Association (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1257/jep.20241430
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas6

This paper documents the changing trends in US carbon emissions and discusses the main factors that contributed to the historical carbon emissions rollercoaster. We divide the discussion into four periods: up to 1920, 1920–1960, 1960–2005 and after 2005. For each period, we discuss the main drivers of national carbon emissions. We then discuss trends in carbon emissions in the electricity sector. Electricity sector emissions were initially very small, but would become the largest source of US carbon emissions over the period 1980–2015, and the largest contributor to decarbonization since 2007. In the last section, we offer some lessons for what developing economies might learn from the US experience