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Energy and the environment explained Outlook for future emissions

U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions could fall by 2050

The Annual Energy Outlook 2026 (AEO2026) includes projections for U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions in different cases.1 Between 2025 and 2050, projected energy-related CO2 emissions could decline between 11% and 38%. Some cases see emissions flatline around 2040 after declining for several years. Although most of our projections are clustered around the Counterfactual Baseline case, changes to policy assumptions related to the transportation and electric power sectors widen the range bookended by two cases. Under the Combination case, when policies aimed at regulating carbon emissions in the power and transportation sectors are removed, more coal and natural gas are used for electric power generation, and more petroleum products are used in the transportation sector.

High fuel fossil fuel prices in the Low Oil and Gas Supply case project a result in the lowest emissions because higher prices cause natural gas and petroleum demand to decline, especially for natural-gas electric power generation and in industrial activities.

Line graph showing projected U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in different cases of the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Annual Energy Outlook 2023.

The largest variations in projected U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions across cases occur in the electric power, transportation, and industrial sectors. Although economic growth assumptions affect consumption and, in turn, projected CO2 emissions in all sectors, different case-specific assumptions affect sectors differently. For example, emissions from the electric power sector are particularly responsive to assumptions about the cost of zero-carbon technologies, and transportation sector emissions are sensitive to assumptions about fossil fuel supply and cost, particularly oil and petroleum products.

World CO2 emissions are projected to increase

The future trajectory of global energy consumption and energy-related CO2 emissions will be determined by complex and interrelated dynamics that play out across regions, sectors, and time. In the International Energy Outlook 2023 (IEO2023), EIA projects that global energy consumption increases 34% in the Reference case, from 638 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) in 2022 to 855 quads in 2050. Among the side cases, global energy consumption rises from 638 quads to between 739 quads and 999 quads by 2050. Corresponding energy-related CO2 emissions rise 15% in the Reference case, from 35.7 billion metric tons in 2022 to 41.0 billion metric tons in 2050. Among the side cases, they vary between 35.1 billion metric tons (a decrease from 2022) and 47.9 billion metric tons by 2050.

1 The AEO projections only consider energy-related CO2 emissions, which are only part of the full economy-wide emissions targets outlined in the U.S. nationally determined contribution (NDC) to global greenhouse gas reductions. The NDC is a formal submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.