Report: Waxman-Markey Bill Emissions Reductions Equal to Taking 500 Million Cars Off the Road
The proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act mandates a 17-percent reduction below 2005 emissions levels by 2020. That’s 1.2 billion 2.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide and the equivalent of taking half a billion cars off the road, reports CAP Senior Fellow Dan Weiss in a column just posted over on the main American Progress site.
Weiss also includes a link to this set of handy conversion tables developed for the California Energy Commission. They provide guidelines on average car and home energy usage and power plant energy output, along with the corresponding average carbon dioxide emissions, which makes it easier to grasp the units involved. For instance, a typical power plant produces roughly the same amount of CO2 in a year as 340,000 cars:
Source: Tables to Convert Energy or CO2 (saved or used) to Familiar Equivalents
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