FACT: U.S. carbon emissions fell by 190 million tons in 2023.

THE NUMBERS: Energy-related carbon emissions, 2023* –

World total:	37.8 billion tons
Change by country
China:	+565 million tons
India:	+190 million tons
World:	+410 million tons
Japan:	-100 million tons
United States:	-190 million tons
European Union:	-220 million tons

*International Energy Agency, 2024

WHAT THEY MEAN:

As the Biden administration’s energy and climate officials think through January’s “pause” on capacity expansion for the U.S.’ $34 billion in liquefied natural gas exports, some data on emissions trends and their causes:

Statisticians at the International Energy Agency calculate carbon emissions each year. This month they came in with a figure of 37.8 billion tons from energy production in 2023, up 410 million tons from their 37.4 billion ton estimate for 2022.  In a longer-term perspective, these figures compare to 0.2 billion tons in 1850 as Victorian steam, gears, and airships took off; to 6 billion tons in 1950 as the world recovered from the Second World War, and to 25 billion tons in 2000 at the millennium.  So, quite a lot of carbon, and a world a bit further away from “net zero” than it was in 2022. But beneath this overall rise, IEA’s experts reveal intriguing shifts, especially in wealthy countries, and perhaps a sense that change is coming:

“Advanced economy GDP grew 1.7% but emissions fell 4.5%, a record decline outside of a recessionary period. Having fallen by 520 Mt in 2023, emissions [in these ‘advanced’ economies] are now back to their level of fifty years ago. Advanced economy coal demand, driven by evolutions in the G7, is back to the level of around 1900. The 2023 decline in advanced economy emissions was caused by a combination of structural and cyclical factors, including strong renewables deployment, coal-to-gas switching in the US, but also weaker industrial production in some countries, and milder weather.”

The 41 “advanced economies” in IEA’s report are the U.S., Canada, the 27 EU members, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, Israel, Japan, Korea, Australia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong and Macau, plus a few micro-states like the Vatican and Andorra. Together, the International Monetary Fund says they produce about 60% of world GDP ($60.9 trillion of 2023’s $104.5 trillion). Their 11.0 billion tons of carbon emissions, however, made up less than a third of the world total, and according to the IEA as a group they are back down to the emissions levels of 1973. Moreover, their 550-million-ton aggregate drop in emissions in 2023 came not during a recession or pandemic, but in a year of reasonably strong growth, which suggests a systemic reduction of emissions across the wealthy world rather than a cyclical blip.

The U.S. is a case in point. IEA estimates American emissions at 4.6 billion tons, a decline of 25% from the 6.1 billion-ton peak twenty years ago, and of 190 million tons from 2022’s 4.8 billion.  Per IEA, the largest part of the U.S.’ 2023 decline — 80 million tons, or about 40% of the total reduction — came not from falling output or changeable weather and hydro issues, but from switching from coal-powered electricity to natural gas.

What does this imply elsewhere? Worldwide, by source IEA believes that (on net) 270 million of last year’s 410 million tons of emissions growth, about two-thirds of the total, came from additional burning of coal for power.  Looked at by place, ‘developing Asia’ now produces half of all world carbon emissions, topped by China at 12.6 billion and then India at 3.5 billion; Chinese emissions grew by 565 million tons and India’s by 190 million tons last year.  Here too, at least in China, data suggest ways to reduce emissions.  China’s “emissions intensity” — the amount of carbon released per dollar of economic output — is down from 0.8 kilos of CO2 in 2013 to 0.5 kilos as of 2020 (the date of the last available estimate), which across China’s $18 trillion economy represents a savings of about five billion tons of carbon a year. Both these countries, and “developing Asia” generally, continue to rely heavily on coal-burning, making Asian coal power the largest “driver” of worldwide emissions growth.  IEA’s report therefore underlines the very large Asian opportunity (noted by PPI’s Paul Bledsoe in an August 2022 report) to cut world emissions by substituting gas, nuclear power, and renewables for Asian coal burning.

In sum, reducing emissions is a big task but not a hopeless one. The advanced economies that make up most of the world economy are now visibly succeeding, having (a) cut emissions substantially over the past five years, (b) done so last year during a period of economic growth, and (c) not by impoverishing themselves but through efficiency, switches from dirtier to cleaner fuels, and technological innovation. The large middle-income countries that are now the largest emissions sources can very much do the same. Where infrastructure allows, low-methane natural gas has a significant and useful part in this.

FURTHER READING

The International Energy Agency reports on carbon emissions in 2023 (executive summary with a link to full text).

Policy:

The White House’s “pause.”

PPI analysis & commentary:

Former Congressman Tim Ryan doesn’t mince words on this.

PPI energy and climate expert Elan Sykes outlines a path forward.

… and comments on Department of Energy policy developments.

Background and data:

NOAA summarizes worldwide surface temperature change since 1880.

Our World in Data tracks emissions by country, industry sector, etc.

And the Energy Information Administration’s International Energy Outlook 2023 looks ahead with projections by region and major country through 2050.

And some trade statistics:

Apart from the energy and climate side of gas debates, how large is LNG trade?  Having overtaken Russia and Saudi Arabia in 2021, the U.S. is the world’s largest energy exporter.  Depending on how you split things up, energy has a case for “top U.S. export” at $323 billion last year, which is about 15% of the U.S.’ $3.05 trillion in total goods and services exports. LNG makes up $34 billion of it. A table putting all this in context with some comparisons:

Total U.S. goods and services exports	$3.053 trillion
All goods put together	$2.051 trillion
All manufacturing	$1.600 trillion
Automotive (vehicles & parts)	$137 billion
Aircraft & parts	$113 billion
Pharmaceuticals & medicines	$108 billion
Integrated circuits	$44 billion
Medical devices	$36 billion
All services	$1.003 trillion
Intellectual property revenue	$126 billion
Student tuition	$40 billion
All energy	$323 billion
Liquefied natural gas	$34 billion
All agriculture	$175 billion
Soybeans	$28 billion

 

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: Half of the world’s 3.51 billion workers don’t have regular pay or labor law protections.

THE NUMBERS: World labor force, 2024* –

Total labor force	3.70 billion
Employed	3.51 billion
Working for wages and salaries	1,780 million
“Self-employed”*	1,625 million
“Formal sector” workers with wage, inspection, & other rules:	1,660 million
“Informal” sector workers without these protections:	2,030 million

 

* Estimates from International Labour Organization, World Employment and Social Outlook 2024.
* The ILO’s term “self-employed” includes business owners, but also includes “own-account” workers such as day laborers, and “contributing family workers” working in small family businesses or farms without pay. The ILO views these two latter groups as comprised of workers who are “least likely to have formal work arrangements, [and] least likely to have social protection and safety nets to guard against economic shocks.”

WHAT THEY MEAN:

The International Labour Organization’s “World Employment and Social Outlook 2024,” out last January, says the world’s workforce has grown by 26 million this year and now totals 3.70 billion people. Subtracting the 191 million people currently unemployed, this means 3.51 billion people go to work daily in factories, on farms, in labs and offices, at home, in restaurants and hotels, and so forth. One perspective on them all, drawn from the ILO’s data, raises some uneasy questions about an ambitious new American “global labor” policy.

The ILO figures divide the world’s employed workers pretty clearly into two groups of about equal size. Those in the first group, about 1.7 billion people, work at “okay-to-good jobs” which feature regularly paid wages or salaries, and legal protections for health and safety, labor rights at work, minimum wages, and holidays.  Those in the second group have “pretty-bad-to-terrible jobs.” They earn money essentially through paid piecework rather than regular wages or salaries, and as workers holding “informal sector” jobs lack their peers’ legal protection for wages, health, and rights. (For a sense of where they work, earlier ILO research – 2019 – reports the highest rates of “informality” at 92% of all farm workers, 84% of domestic service workers such as maids and nannies, 74% of construction workers, 61% of accommodation and food service workers, and 60% of repair shops employees.) This second tier also features the vast majority of the world’s very worst jobs — that is, those involving abuses such as the world’s 160 million child laborers, and the 241 million extreme-working-poverty jobs paying $2.15 a day or less.

A “global labor” policy meant to fundamentally improve working life should try to help people in the “pretty-bad-to-terrible” second group get into the “okay-to-good” group. The most likely way to do this on a large scale is to help low- and middle-income countries improve labor laws and develop the professional civil services needed to implement these laws throughout their economies, and so change working life for very large numbers of people.

Now to the new policy: Last November, the White House launched a global labor standards strategy, explained in a 3,444-word “Memorandum on Advancing Worker Empowerment, Rights, and High Labor Standards Globally” along with supporting speeches and press releases. The Memorandum sets out a many-tiered array of policies and agency responsibilities to support worker rights abroad, fight child labor and forced labor, improve health and safety standards, and so forth.  In principle its policies cover the entire 3.7 billion world labor force.  But in practice the Memo’s content — and even more so the releases describing implementation plans — seem (a) to place workers in global “supply chains” employed by large international businesses at the center of policy, and (b) to focus on enforcement against ill-doers rather than on efforts to help workers move from bad to better jobs.  Here for example is Julie Su, Acting Secretary of Labor, describing the DoL’s view of its responsibilities at the Memorandum’s November launch event:

“[C]orporations are global. So workers, and worker power, and the way we think about workers have to be global, as well.  …  When global actors are allowed to evade labor laws in one country by exploiting workers in another part of the world, this undermines workers’ rights everywhere.  And when workers are harassed, discriminated against, and attacked as they produce things that are sold all around the world, we cannot simply look away and ignore the ways that our global economy brings with it global responsibility. … The Department of Labor is also expanding its work to combat forced labor and improve transparency and accountability from the top to the bottom of global supply chains.”

It’s certainly good for people and officials in rich countries to think about the lives of factory and logistics workers, and to find ways to reduce abuses in supply chains. But if these are the core focuses, policy is very likely to miss most of the workers in the “pretty-bad-to-terrible” jobs group. The 2023 edition of the “World Employment and Social Outlook” report, for example, drew on a study of 24 middle-income countries to conclude that workers in “global supply chains” (or at least those supply chains ultimately linked to wealthy countries) are more likely than their peers in purely domestic jobs to work in the “okay-to-good-jobs” group with regular pay and legal protection:

“[S]ectors with higher GSC [“global supply-chain”] integration tend to have a larger share of wage and salaries employment, a lower incidence of informality and a lower proportion of low-paid employment — and hence in principle a higher quality of employment.”

The implication is that while it’s easier for policymakers to focus on supply-chain workers connected to the wealthy world than on the “informal” sector maids, day laborers, and farm workers who are less visible to American eyes, the latter group is (on average, based on ILO’s finding) in worse straits and would often improve their lives by getting supply-chain jobs.  Likewise, it’s perhaps natural to think first about ‘enforcement’ on individual cases and only later about less glamorous but more systematic efforts to help improve laws and build professional civil service bureaucracies.  But the latter task is the main one, if the goal is to make labor standards meaningful for entire workforces.  If the next years’ policies are supply-chain and enforcement issues, then, the Memorandum’s achievements will be limited.  In some cases – if enforcement in supply chains is such a priority as to slow the flow of workers from “pretty-bad-to-terrible” work into “okay-to-good” supply-chain jobs, or in some cases even push workers out of these jobs altogether — they could have perverse as well as good effects. (See below for a sad 2014 example.)  So: probably time for some rethinking, some revisions, and a broader approach.

FURTHER READING