Fig. 1: Projecting historical and future air quality and carbon emissions from industrial decarbonization in the United States.

Chart projecting impacts of industrial decarbonization for air quality and carbon dioxide emissions, with values showing only the projections for the baseline (2030) scenario and historical or current emissions as of 2017. The projected “baseline” or 2030 numbers are based on no carbon policy in 2030 – a scenario that seems the most likely the current approach taken by the current federal administration. National emissions for the U.S. are shown in billion metric tons (MT) for CO₂ and million MT for non-CO₂ pollutants. Source: Authors’ own, modified and redrawn substantially using values from P. Picciano, M. Qiu, S. D. Eastham, M. Yuan, J. Reilly, and N. E. Selin, “Air quality related equity implications of U.S. decarbonization policy,” Nat. Commun., vol. 14, no. 1, p. 5543, Sep. 2023, doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-41131-x. Published under a CC-BY 4.0 Attribution International License.