Declining Energy Emissions per Capita of Every US State
- ORGEL
- Dec 30, 2025
- 2 min read
In one of the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) most interesting articles of 2025, they publish that every US state from 2005 to 2023, had a decline in energy-sector carbon emissions per capita. The total weight fell by 20%, and when considering the 14% increase in population, they fell by 30% per capita. The reduction is attributed to emissions reductions in the electricity sector, specifically from switching from coal to natural gas generation, and additions of solar and wind generation. Maryland experienced the largest decline in energy-related carbon emissions per capita - a staggering 49% reduction.
Over the 2005 to 2023 period, the dominant sector in the US emissions profile flipped from the electricity sector to the transportation sector, which has retained its upward trajectory (see graph). The key takeaway is that the energy transition creating the decline in electricity-sector emissions required a timeline extending more than a decade. The window for that emissions-reducing energy transition was sustained by good pricing and helpful market conditions for early adopters. With some early models in place to satisfy skeptics, and an opportunity for engineers to synthesize feedback into product improvements, broader adoption became more frequent. The compounding effect of an energy transition occurs in later years when higher volumes of improved products and methods roll out. This indicates that impacts to the larger picture shouldn’t be expected in the earliest stages.
Deployment conditions like permitting and interconnection queues, along with the pace of infrastructure turn-over, is just as critical to accelerating energy transition timelines as the technology itself. On a smaller level, this article from the EIA excludes data from 2024 and 2025, and in that time, it’s likely that new data center electricity demand added to US electricity-sector emissions, moderating the sector’s descent below the transportation sector. From a larger view, the data show that sustained emissions reductions emerge from long-duration transitions shaped by market conditions, infrastructure readiness, and deployment speed.
