U.S. Emissions Jumped in 2025 as Coal Power Rebounded
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
> In a reversal, the [EPA] plans to calculate only the cost to industry when setting pollution limits, and not the monetary value of saving human lives, documents show.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/climate/trump-epa-air-pol...
>calculate only the cost to industry
Industry is perfectly capable of calculating its own costs, and advocating for its own motivated self-interest, thank you very much. This is not a bug we need to fix.
The purpose of agencies like the EPA is to "see the [Pareto optimal] forest for the trees" and counterbalance industry's [Nash equilibrium] profit motive.
Otherwise let's just rename it the Shareholder Protection Agency, because that's all it would be.
This is one of the biggest downsides to letting the most old, and "wise", among us run the show. They have no incentive to help future generation or even current generations.
The old truism remains true today. A society becomes great when old men plant trees to cast shade they will never sit in.
All that power has to come from somewhere. The idea that all this AI is powered by “green” energy and unicorn farts is just a bunch of PR puffery from tech companies trying to divert attention from the environmental damage they’re causing.
The uncomfortable truth is that AI is the biggest setback on our path to energy sustainability we’ve seen in a generation.
AI doesn’t matter. If it’s not AI it’ll be EVs. Or if you’re pro immigration (as I am) then what do you think letting more people into the country does for power demand? It’s something like 5kW averaged out over 24/7 per head. That’s probably conservative when you do a full accounting of all demand per head. Every new immigrant is probably equivalent to a rack of GPUs.
Degrowth is political fantasy. It will establish a populist backlash every time. Or are you going to line up to be the first to become poorer?
I look at that stuff as a very privileged fantasy. Only the rich can romanticize poverty. The people who fantasize about green back to the land scenarios are usually wealthy middle or upper class people in developed nations who have zero first hand experience of what that actually means outside the Avatar films.
That's happening without regulations, though, isn't it? It's been making headlines for the last few months.
For instance:
- Meta https://carboncredits.com/meta-signs-three-nuclear-deals-of-...
- Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos_Power?utm_source=chatgp...
- Microsoft https://www.jamasoftware.com/blog/2025/10/14/tech-giants-tur...
- Amazon https://spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-powered-data-center?utm_so...
If anything, it seems to me that AI is revitalizing nuclear energy investments, which I think is a good thing. Wouldn't you agree?
By the time a nuclear plant comes online, Renewables have incrementally added 400 gigawatts. Granted, nukes generate 4 to 8 times more energy, but solar can significantly improve crop yields and soil health. They also make it easy to raise sheep and cattle. It's a good thing I like lamb (yum).
There is no consensus among political scientists that either a two-party system or a multi-party/coalition system is inherently “better.” Each design produces different trade-offs in representation, stability, accountability, and policy outcomes.
But forever growth also isn't sustainable. No matter how productive we are, the planet would still not survive.
Eh, I'm not so sure about that. Sustainability politics is mainstream in Europe in a way it isn't in the US. Aside from ethical concerns, a lot of people over here see climate change as a very real economic threat (likely to cause them material economic harm within their lifetimes).
You're probably right that a general degrowth strategy wouldn't ever be popular, but I bet a policy that say restricted AI and cryptocurrency with the aim of reducing electricity prices would be.
That's arbitrary. If you went back in time before AI and crypto, which industries would you pick to constrain growth or development of?
Is it whatever the latest industry is that is driving incremental emissions? If so, I don't know that it is a compelling mental model, because that is a degrowth mindset.
My mental model is more about industries that are using a lot of resources without actually generating value comensurate with that use.
> Only for a generation (mostly \s but entirely true).
That's not accurate. The problems of population aging are not confined to a single generation. They are structural and persistent, unless the underlying institutions adapt.
Aging is a continuing demographic process, not a single event. Once a society enters sustained low fertility and longer life expectancy, each cohort is smaller than the one before it. Each cohort also lives longer. That means that today's workers support more retirees. Tomorrow's workers will support even more, unless something changes.
It can feel (but isn't) like a single generation problem if major structural changes happen like: raising retirement age in line with life expectancy, shifting pensions to funded, large-scale immigration, major productivity gains from technology, or cultural shifts to high fertility.
I mean, unless fertility completely collapses (to like less than 0.5) then it'll mostly be a single generation problem. Regardless of any future changes, the current generation (my kids etc) will be supporting a much larger older cohort, with problems arising from that. I am one of 4 siblings, have two kids, and as long as both of them have two kids, no more problems arise (obviously extrapolating to the population).
There's some amount of irreducible demand for kids so I'd be surprised to see TFR continue to decline on a generational basis. Mind you, I could be wrong (or alternatively, we could see a massive increase in TFR like we did post WW2).
It's astounding how people don't see it, even when it's the invisible hand of the market that's choking them to death.
It's that the majority of AI deployments are happening in a country which has a has had very poor renewable adoption and is now actively sabotaging renewable projects with an active opposition to climate goals because a particular group wants to protect their existing revenue.
Renewables are cheap and highly profitable, and money talks - even in the US, as can be seen in Texas. But it's hard to fight against your government when they want to force you to buy their rich friends' fossil fuels instead...
The AI company is issuing press releases saying how they bought all this clean power but in practice they just forced some old clunky power plants back online to meet their demand.
It is technically possible for the AI companies to decide to become self-sufficient or enter into the energy production market if things tilt far enough in favor of that, but it is somewhat unlikely and unexpected.
Big renewable projects are run by electricity producers, not consumers, and they are the ones being actively sabotaged in all sorts of ways.
You could even legislate it and make big tech companies responsible for providing the power themselves. One stroke of the pen resolves the issue.
If OpenAI can afford to “spend $1 trillion” on AI they can afford to build some wind/solar/battery power plants.
>You could even legislate it
"At BigGridCo we're proud to switch AI to 100% renewable power. On paper we just send all the dirty power to (scoffs) pesky houses and industry, leaving the clean power for AI."
Can Microsoft and Google not afford to build a battery factory or nuclear power plant? Are they broke or something?
Why is the solution to scarcity of supply to bend over backwards and roll back regulations? The scarcity of supply itself should be a hint to society to stop supporting unfettered growth. Or maybe these mega-corporations need to get over it and pay fair market value for the projects they want to build.
Why do we have to breathe coal power emissions so that we can have one more ChatGPT wrapper nobody asked for?
You want an AI company to invest in a project that takes decades to complete? What are the chances they're around when it completes and what powers their datacenters while that takes place
Our power consumption won't be going down, and it generally wouldn't be the AI company itself running the project but the electricity companies that earn money supplying power that see dollar signs in all that extra electricity consumption.
Even if the AI companies all die, our global electricity consumption will keep going up margins will be better than the retired plants, so it's a good investment regardless.
> Even if the AI companies all die, our global electricity consumption will keep going up margins will be better than the retired plants, so it's a good investment regardless
If the company putting up the money goes bankrupt, what happens to the project? Maybe it's picked up by someone else?
I think AI companies should try to make it to 2030, my guess is at least a few of them won't make it. Don't commit to projects that won't even complete in the 2030s
Granted, the US would have to import professionals to do it at that speed, and politicians will of course try to hinder the process with endless bureaucracy as their sponsors would rather sell fossil fuels...
> If the company putting up the money goes bankrupt, what happens to the project?
If people didn't start such medium-length projects out of fear of hypothetical future bankruptcy, there would never have been any infrastructure projects. Investors do not worry about them going bankrupt, they worry about losing momentum and would generally rather light money on fire than stagnate. We live in a time where business people start space programs out of bloody boredom.
However, what happens in these cases is just that other investors flock the carcass and takes over for cheap, allowing them to reap the benefits without having to have footed the whole bill themselves. Bankruptcy is not closure for a company, but a restructuring often under new ownership.
The only realistic scenario where such project would be dropped is if the world situation changed enough such that it would no longer be considered profitable to complete, such as due to other technology massively leapfrogging it to the point where investing in that from scratch is better than continuing investment, or demand being entirely gone such that the finished plant would be unproductive. Otherwise the project would at most change hands until it was operational.
(Particular AI companies making it to 2030 is not really that important when it is electricity producers making these investments and running these projects to earn money from AI companies, EV charging, heatpumps, etc.)
Finland, Olkiluoto, license application 2000, construction started in 2005, planned operation in 2010, actual operation 2023.
France Flammanville 3, construction started in 2007, planned operation in 2012, actual operation 2024, so 17 years
Hinkley point UK, construction began 2017 projected commissioning is in 2029/2030.
Vogtle USA, permits 2006, construction started 2013, operation 2023/2024.
South Korea, shin kori 3 and 4 took 7 and 10 years. And those aren't new designs.
Japan, the newest commissioned reactor is from 1997? Sure, France built really fast in the 80s... Different requirements/rules/public opinion.
And this is all from the start of construction. The beginning of the project is actually waaaay before that.
Please send me some links when you've done your research to prove me wrong. And yes, I did leave out china because I don't see the us building a Chinese design reactor... And even if that was possible it wouldn't meet us standards so you can effectively start over.
> If people didn't start such medium-length projects out of fear of hypothetical future bankruptcy, there would never have been any infrastructure projects.
And who finances that? Not banks by themselves, governments always have to give out some loan guarantees or favorable treatment. No private investor can deal with that amount of risk. So the bureaucracy that you speak of, without it no nuclear plant would exist.
So why don't you point me to a commercial nuclear power plant that was privately funded without loan guarantees by a government and all of that.
> We live in a time where business people start space programs out of bloody boredom.
So if you're referring to SpaceX, no Musk started that to make life multi planetary. And he understood that no one will finance that so the company needs to first make money to finance that mars shot.
Bezos I'm less familiar with but I know he has a collection of space artifacts so I think it's an interest of his and he probably wants to show he can do what musk can.
I wouldn't rule out the current expenditure on AI to be a risk to the big players either. They're putting so much money in this. And with all the off balance sheet tricks that are happening now it'll be hard to know the real exposure.
If the concern is over externalities such as CO2 emissions and other types of pollution then sure, let's tax those directly. That will help accelerate solutions through free market mechanisms.
Do we have a solid breakdown ala Our World in Data for the energy mix mused to power AI Datacenters?
The only thing I have seen is the facility that Musk acquired in Memphis for Grok is illegaily emitting more pollutants than allowed because of Musk's insane drive for speed and it is causing health problems in the underlying poor community.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJT2JeDCyw
Its the reason I will never use Grok but i've been curious about where ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are hosted. Google has had a history of efficient data centers and they are running custom silicon so i'd assume they are the best here?
Energy usage goes up for all societies, no matter how efficient we make things to be.
Our living standard goes up with more electricity (EVs for example require more energy, as would more electrification of things).
The real problem is no investment in alternative sources like Nuclear.
We've had this debate before and the usual renewable only crowd only see as far as today's usage to say what we 'need'.
If we were on track for everything else a serious uptake of AI might have put us barely off track.. But this is like blaming the wafer thin mint for the fat guy exploding.
Most of that is convincing is done in the exact opposite direction with... you guessed it... AI.
1. US emissions didn't jump. See the first chart. The 2.4% increase easily falls within 1 standard deviation of typical changes. In that line, US emissions have remained flat since 2019.
2. The caption over that chart uses more neutral language "U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased in 2025" instead of jumped. Which is it?
3. The 2.4% increase in emissions matches 2.4% increase in energy use nationwide.
4. The title is structured to make it sound like coal power is primarily causal of the emissions increase even though that's clearly not the case.
Unrelated point: Coal quite literally poisons the air. Why are activists so fixated on the abstract specter of climate change to convert others? I'm pretty sure we could win over lots of MAHA types with that framing.
(It wasn't even solar or wind or nuclear that killed coal. Really, it was _gas_; the writing was on the wall for the industry some time ago.)
There is no longer the "voters don't want to lose their jobs" argument. Now it becomes purely a "these guys pay lots of taxes" argument - but with most big companies being very efficient at tax planning, a huge mine might pay next to no taxes too. Then it becomes politically far easier to ignore them, and eventually maybe shut them down on a whim, eg. to appease green voters.
There was once a time the conservative movement was built on pragmatic rationalism, and people keep looking for it in modern rhetoric. But it’s become built on fallacious populism recently as a short term way to grab power, then overwhelm the system to “rig” it towards their favored people. It’s not about conservatives or liberals, ideology or political goals are the foil. The goal is the appropriation of power and the blocking of democratic change in favor of cronyism.
So there’s no point in trying to find a rational explanation for the policy. There is none in the policy itself. It only exists to garner enough votes to do what’s happening in real time with the goal that with enough shenanigans voting won’t matter next time.
I understand the urge to tear these facilities down, but if we actually care about the environment a more nuanced path is probably ideal.
https://www.publicpower.org/periodical/article/over-100-coal...
Your link is from a lobbyist for energy providers. I don't trust their opinions are biased in the public's favor.
My understanding from news is that coal is more expensive than even natural gas.
:)
That sucks. Coal is the worst IMHO. In NC there have been a number of times that fly ash lakes flooded into rivers, full of wonderful things like mercury.
Obviously we should be moving to green energy, but coal provides energy independence and doesnt fund horrid regimes..
a Coal plant seems way better for world peace than LNG plant
the cost savings could be put to developing green energy faster
So yes, best leave all fossil fuels where they are, but coal is especially bad.
I don't disagree that climate change pressures are going to lead to strife, just the "next major flare-up" part.
In my mind, the only viable way out is the power density of nuclear. Datacenter should not be ordered by taxpayer subsidized energy.
How adding would more expensive energy solve it? I don’t get what ”energy density” has to do with it at all?
All western schemes to build new nuclear power are enormously subsidized.
The only reason tech like that spears to work is because of partial investment. Unfortunately wind comes at tremendous cost and destruction of natural landscapes, enormous maintenance, and piles of carbon fiber waste.
In the first three quarters of 2025 we added 137 TWh wind energy globally. That is not driven by subsidies or losing money.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/solar-and-wind-growt...
> At the same time, colder winter temperatures led many buildings and homes to burn more natural gas and fuel oil for heating last year.
Which none of "shut down the AI DC's", "stop burning coal", or "build more wind & solar" would do squat about.
Maybe we should be looking at boring, pragmatic programs to improve the heating energy efficiency of the worst (say) 5% of America's buildings & homes?
At least in my part of the US, there are also "state", "county", "city", and "township" governments, which can do such things. They don't have magically unlimited competence and funding - but Washington has never had those either.
OOPS: I forgot school systems, community colleges, and public universities. Those generally control their own infrastructure, and have a lot of it. And the community colleges often have Trades programs - which can boost the workforce you need to replace energy wasting old furnaces, windows, and such.
Otherwise - maybe ask somebody who's spent a decade or few in interest groups or politics, about the whole "if you want to get anything done, you gotta focus your efforts" concept.
We’re moving backwards. They actually think we want to work in coal mines again by the hundreds of thousands.
Coal share of energy likely peaked for China in 2025, even as overall energy usage increased - almost all that increase has come from renewables, which China is of course doubling down upon. China is on trend to become an electrostate, USA on trend to regress on energy infrastructure which will power the next 100 hundred years
US bad, China very bad.
- USA emits much more per Capita
- CO2 accumulates in atmosphere, so you must account for emissions since the country industrialized
- USA sent it's polluting industries to China and buy the final products
The AA motto goes well: The first step is to admit you have a problem
This is a fair criticism of per capita US emissions.
> a lot of CO2 there comes from US outsourcing energy-intensive production
This is not a reasonable indictment of US per capita emissions. China chooses to manufacture for the US and the world. Consumption, by the US, but importantly, also the rest of the world would be less if China didn't do cheap manufacturing at scale.
Reasonable framing is PRC is emitting a lot simply because it has 4x people, exports are not substantial contributor, with caveat their population is declining. US is emitting more than what accounting shows, while also adding more increasing pop with higher per capita emissions. Probably not reasonable to criticize countries for population growth, but pretty fair to point out US (and other fossil exporters) should have exports count towards emissions, conversely, PRC renewable exports should be credited.
Instead they're being punished for producing the panel that saves other people emissions. For comparison US exported ~5 billion BOE / barrels of oil equivalent per year, PRC exported 0.5 BOE in solar, which translates to displacing 15 billion BOE assuming 30 year life span. In real world, PRC renewable exports is displacing 3x more emission than US fossil exports generate. That 15b BOE is larger than PRC emissions via exports, i.e. for all intents and purpose PRC export is now (substantial) net carbon sink, it's a global decarbonization utility. Meanwhile US chooses to be export fossil to the world.
I'm trying, but really struggling, to understand your logic of anchoring on land area.
Can you explain why you think that's a better metric than per capita? Is it because there are climate-changing emissions that are NOT driven by humans (e.g. seasonal wildfires, volcanic eruptions, etc.)? Or is it something else?
It’s very hard to calculate exactly how much the ecosystem inside a country borders can offset, but a good enough metric is its landmass.
Sure, countries like Morrocos will win with this metric and countries like Brasil will lose. But in the end, it’s much better than rewarding what is actually a problem (for climate) like if it was some virtue: high birth rates.
> It’s very hard to calculate exactly how much the ecosystem inside a country borders can offset, but a good enough metric is its landmass.
I think this is a flawed basis, because weather patterns, sea rise, etc. don't honor country borders. Only highly localized pollution is somewhat "constrained", but country borders are even porous to that.
So I still don't know that it is an effective incentive to find a better balance. Per capita also has its problems, like penalizing less-developed countries from developing their societies, industries.
Nah.
My point is that people tend to turn emissions into a pissing contest about which country is emitting more, and it always becomes a debate of total emission vs. per capita, because it's ultimately a political issue.
What I'm saying is that total emissions are what matter for climate change.
If China split evenly into two new countries, each country’s emissions are half what China’s was.
This is why per capita matters.
These 5th column arguments, are just appaling. USA (and EU, if we finally wake up and smell the coffee) don't have to pay for Asian high birthrates.
If a country has the same area as another, I expect that country to stick to the same total emissions.
China doesn't have to pay for it's high birthrates in the past? Well, then the West doesn't have to pay for their inovation and productivity in the past as well.
By that logic Canada, Australia, NZ, and arguably even US are settled places and should not be counted.
I do agree that every goalpost can be moved by drawing the boundary as you wish, but surely the fact that developed countries enjoyed a good standard of living for 100+ years and contributed more for a long time counts for something
The fact that US emissions are not going down shows that something is really really wrong there.
Europe claiming that its emissions are going down is deceptive as taking into account its share of emission in China would paint a different picture.
This was never about saving the planet, it was always about destroying our socio-economic system. Look how the tune changed in Brazil when Lula came into power: they never burned so much rainforest, but now it's fine, becasue socialists are in power.
China falling actually.
> USA 6 billion tons CO2 and falling
You're literally commenting on an article about it increasing.
What "trends" are you talking about?
Edit: cursory search shows a flat/falling trend.[0]
[0]https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
It's also silly to look at anything other than per-capita metrics. If China arbitrarily splits in half or expands, the per-capita metric remains invariant to the historical luck factor behind why national borders are the way they are.
[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi...
Isn't it because they're now getting Russian oil and gas at rock bottom prices from western sanctions?
gas (ofss fuel) is increasing a lot... So yeah, there is some renewables, but we're still pretty far from what is needed...
I was unaware of this - thanks.
Re: China, see: [1] which goes into some detail. There's also various IEA energy reports which anticipated a fall for India and China after the fall in every other country (save, apparently the US which is bucking the trend).
Not per capita. Absolute.
Any other questions?
...
...the researchers said Mr. Trump’s policies would take time to have an effect and they mostly weren’t responsible for last year’s rise in emissions."
We are destroying the planet and we will come to regret this on our death beds. If anyone doubts that, go for a walk in nature and appreciate how incredible our ecosystems are, and how lucky we are to have that biodiversity, not AI agents.
Edit: I see you edited your comment from 'I have gotten gotten tremendous value from AI agents' to 'The US has gotten tremendous value from AI agents'. But the general point still applies.
Any quote on that part...
That would likely the 1st time to miss sarcasm... need few more words not the '/s' (I never use /s)
Now...