US coal 'biggest contributor by far' to rise in global emissions | Hacker News Reader

US coal 'biggest contributor by far' to rise in global emissions

thechemicalengineer.com

48 pointssoftwaredoug37 comments

Take all of the ethanol subsidies and build nuclear, cover parking lots with solar.

This is all we want.

Geothermal needs to enter the chat as well.

I'm not anti-nuclear (if it's "done right"), but the economics of it are not very competitive. I think it's a technology we should not abandon (I'd love to see SMRs find a way to be viable and secure).

I would love the idea geothermal, I'm just not aware of a lot of places in the US that can take advantage of it :/

Iceland on the other hand....

There's a lot of development in leveraging fracking tech, Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), as well as some other wild shit like using masers: https://newatlas.com/energy/quaise-newberry-volcano-marble-f...

There's plenty of geothermal in the US to be tapped into, we just need to invest more in it. It then becomes the perfect baseload utility.

Enhanced geothermal systems could expand geothermal power generation - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67204 - February 19th, 2026

Map: https://www.nlr.gov/docs/libraries/gis/high-res-images/geoth...

Or build renewables and storage and get massively more energy, in a few years rather than in the 2040s.

Not sure where this fixation on new nuclear comes from?

It's the magic bullet that will solve emissions, I suppose because it's advanced technology and the hippies are against it.

Ignoring the enormous cost, and long build times, plus the fact that when it gets hot they have to be turned off like last Summer.

Yeah, they have their place, but renewables are the real hero here.

When it began to dawn on them that their political "side" was intentionally ignoring climate change to boost fossil fuel profiteers they fell back to mocking hippies and silly women environmentalist for supporting feel good renewables instead of manly nuclear.

It made them feel much better, so now they need to desperately avoid learning anything about either renewables or nuclear power because their ego will collapse if confronted with reality.

Their side will never learn, as it isn't an education issue, but an ideology issue. Anti renewables is deeply ingrained in their identity and belief system. We just need to keep powering through the energy transition while ~2M voters 55+ age out every year. You're not going to logic and reason someone out of ideology [1] [2]. Same reason 100k churches are going to close over the next 5-10 years [3]. The ideology ages out, because it is rigid and in many aspects, unwavering versus being able to change.

Not many coal generators (~182GW) [4] and mines [5] in the US left to go. Keep going. Fossil gas gets pushed out next.

(If the US replaced all of the ag land it uses for biofuels, about the size of Oregon, with solar PV, it would produce more power than the entire country consumes while being wildly more efficient)

[1] https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/idaho-coun...

[2] https://www.datawrapper.de/_/vecRk/ ("755 counties have ordinances against renewables, and 61% of those counties are rural.")

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644302 (citations)

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49704064 (citations)

[5] https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=03b7a02fb9c24967918...

("Progress occurs one funeral at a time." -- Max Planck)

I had Claude make this table of CO2 emissions per capita and nuclear energy share, from 1960 to today. https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/9ef28451-1f6c-4809-b575-4...

I think people like nuclear because, over the last half century, CO2 emissions per capita have been drastically lower in the places nuclear has a larger energy share, like France.

Nuclear made a lot more sense back when solar panels and batteries were less mature.

With how insanely cheap solar and batteries are getting, it doesn't make much financial sense to build new nuclear plants anymore (for grid generation, they're still great for things like military ships).

Which is an argument for the Messmer plan half a century ago. Now what we spend our money on for the 2026 version of the Messmer plan.

Well then

> US scraps limits on emissions from coal and gas power plants

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cmly433ke05vo

https://www.sierraclub.org/coal/coal-plant-map

https://openenergyhub.ornl.gov/explore/dataset/eia-860-data/...

U.S. coal-fired generating capacity retired in 2025 was the least in 15 years - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67427 - April 13th, 2026

Planned retirements of U.S. coal-fired electric-generating capacity to increase in 2025 - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64604 - February 25, 2025

~182GW of coal generation capacity remains to be retired, as of this comment, per EIA's Form EIA-860 generator dataset. The DOE was illegally mandating must run for the below coal generators, which should now be able to close due to a recent judicial ruling.

Michigan coal plant [J.H. Campbell] set to close was illegally kept open - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49666023 - September 2026

  J.H. Campbell Units 1, 2 and 3 in Michigan (1,331 MW)
  Transalta Centralia Unit 2 in Washington (670 MW)
  R.M. Schahfer Units 17 and 18 in Indiana (722 MW)
  F.B. Culley Unit 2 in Indiana (90 MW)
  Craig Unit 1 in Colorado (427 MW)

The increased demand in coal was, uhum, fueled primarily by data center energy demands. Along with coal, there was also an uptick in solar installations to meet DC energy needs. Given solar is cheaper, it stands to reason more solar will be built to meet DC energy demand.

The increased use of coal was, uhum, dictated by the Trump administration. They are rabidly anti-renewals (too woke), and all in on fossil fuels.

And loosening pollution rules "because AI needs more power" should lead to torches and pitchforks.

Coal (and gas) has "owners" and so that means more wealthy people to give Trump gold trinkets and praise. Trump can turn $1M of tax into $500k wealth for a Coal mine owner, that owner can give Trump $100k "donation" and praise The Donald as the greatest President in history. No downside. Well, not for Donald.

I think the US is going to find itself with a bunch of stranded fossil fuel infrastructure (expensive but now worthless) and hyperinflation. Countries that ten years ago would see the US as an old ally which has fallen on hard times will instead see a traitor getting what was coming and turn a blind eye.

The US loves winning!

Selene Law: "Make no mistake: China is still by far the biggest CO2 emitter in the world”

from https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-countries-that-consume-... top 10 coal burning nations:

Consumption in exajoules ranked by 2025 use

   1 China 92.24 55.6%
   2 India 23.07 13.9%
   3 US     8.73  5.3%
   4 Indon  5.15 3.1%
   5 Japan  4.36 2.6%
   6 SA     3.65 2.2%
   7 Russia 3.56 2.1%
   8 S.Korea 2.86 1.7%
   9 Vietnam 2.57 1.5%
  10 Türkiye 1.79 1.1%

This is more about the trajectory. China is all-in on building renewables while the current US administration is pushing hard for more coal even when it doesn't make economic sense.

Shouldn't it be more about absolute impact? Tell me when you think the crossover occurs and US exceed Chinese use?

China's coal use has fallen below 50%, and at their current low carbon deployment rates, renewables share of total electricity generated increases ~10%/year. They account for half of all solar deployed globally. They potentially reach net zero as it relates to electricity generation in the next 5-10 years, and are expected to reach low carbon energy generation being ~70% of their total electrical generation in 2027.

"If China maintains expansion at the 430-gigawatt-per-year level, installed wind and solar capacity would reach roughly 2,700 gigawatts by 2027. That would be more than five times the entire wind and solar capacity in the EU. Whether this value is realistic depends mainly on two factors: expansion of high-voltage transmission lines connecting generation and consumption regions, and political will to actually decommission the coal power plant fleet."

The US could replace all of it's coal fired generation in a year if they went as fast as China (even accounting for capacity factor of solar vs coal). They choose not to.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49525501 (citations)

HN Search: china batteries - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

what's your forecast for crossover point of total carbon emission from coal China vs. US?

Why is it relevant? It doesn't matter, except to perhaps the US consumers who will have to pay billions of dollars more as ratepayers for coal generated power versus renewables over the remaining life of these generators. There is only one coal plant, in Dry Forks, WY, where coal is still cheaper than renewables.

> The cost of running existing coal power plants in the United States continues rising while new wind and solar costs keep falling. Our first Coal Cost Crossover report (2019) found 62 percent of U.S. coal capacity was more expensive to run than to replace with renewables, while our second (2021) found 72 percent of capacity more expensive than renewables. Our latest Coal Cost Crossover research finds incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act accelerate this trend – 99 percent of all U.S. coal plants (209 out of 210) are now more expensive to run than replacement by new local solar, wind, or energy storage.

> This report finds 99 percent of the existing U.S. coal fleet is more expensive to run compared to replacement by new solar or wind. Replacing coal plants with local wind and solar would also save enough to finance nearly 150 gigawatts of four-hour battery storage, over 60 percent of the coal fleet’s capacity, and generate $589 billion in new investment across the U.S. Our report provides policy recommendations to facilitate a just transition through the Coal Cost Crossover.

https://energyinnovation.org/report/the-coal-cost-crossover-...

(report is from 2023, the economics of renewables and solar have only improved since then)

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I did not realize your primary concern was saving US consumers money. If that's the case then my question is irrelevant. The original article was focused on global carbon emissions, which was the context for my question.

Feel free to review the resources provided to answer any further questions you might have.

I don't think China will ever pass the per capita historical emissions of the USA.

Estimates are tricky but it seems like there is a rough consensus that CCP cumulative carbon emissions will pass the US between 2035 and 2050. The calculation that matters for global impact is total emission levels. We only have one atmosphere. While decision making that affects the total is a mix of individual and governmental, in a totalitarian state government decisions outweigh individual ones by orders or magnitude.

Certainly not per capita.

The past is the past. I think it's more important what choices they are making now. China is aggressively replacing fossil fuels with renewables. The US should be doing the same but instead is actively trying to increase fossil fuel usage.

When the crossover will happen is impossible to say because future US administrations probably won't pursue such mindbogglingly stupid policies.

a drop in the bucket

They gave numbers for the increase in coal, but not the increase in CO2. It's hard to know what the impact is

The impact is a drop in the bucket emissions wise.

Basically almost any emission is a "drop in the bucket", and yet the bucket is somehow full.

The usual thing is to point at China because China is a huge place with a huge population and so as it industrialized it uses a lot of power and emits lots of CO2.

This made plenty of sense ten years ago, when for a smaller country you could compare their entire CO2 footprint to China's annual growth and ask why bother. But increasingly while China is still huge these comparisons look worse for even medium-sized countries unless they're actually on a sensible path. China is growing more slowly and importantly mostly by using more renewables and electrifying, so the comparison looks more uncomfortable.

The comparison with China was never very good, as thinking in terms of emissions per country is useless. Per capita emissions would be much more relevant, and even then you'd have to take into account that Chinese factories produce their goods mainly for Western markets.

Per captia emissions is the most useless stat and by the way China's per captia emissions are high now so update that talking point. As for the western market argument, governments are responsible for managing their emissions not private companies. The reason China makes goods for the western market is because the western markets introduced legislation to try and reduce emissions while China did not.

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