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U.S. Emissions Jumped in 2025 as Coal Power Rebounded
- metalman 8mo agopound for pound ,Americas biggest import is oxygen
- walthamstow 8mo agoI read recently that there are more people working as yoga teachers in the USA than are employed in the coal industry as a whole.
- londons_explore 8mo agoWhen entire industries are automated, and one CEO can mine and sell millions of tons just by clicking buttons on a computer, it raises the question what incentive governments have to protect that industry. 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.
- fnordpiglet 8mo agoThere is no such logic going on in the political calculus. It’s a fallacious call to a past where an uneducated man could get a good job in the mines, and by fallacious implication the entire ecosystem of work for uneducated men, that existed 50 years ago and does not now. It’s a symbol of something lost to “liberal” political ideology - something people who have never worked in a mine but also feel disenfranchised can get behind. There is no real belief coal is coming back into style, no one anywhere wants a coal plant operating near them and even if we built more, no one else on earth would buy our excess coal. It’s a canard and a red herring to distract disenfranchised under employed under educated and under skilled Americans, just like the anti-immigrant agenda, and all the other fallacies the modern conservative movement is built around. The goal isn’t to solve a single actual structural problem - it’s to appeal emotionally with things that sound like they could solve problems, despite the fact they wouldn’t if implemented and would make many other things worse. 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.
- yoavm 8mo agoSearching online, it seems to be comparing to coal miners specifically, not the industry as a whole. In any case, what conclusions are you drawing from this?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- jstanley 8mo agoMaybe all of these emissions are coming from yoga classes instead of coal mines? We've been looking in the wrong place all along.
- jairuhme 8mo agoNot OP, but I have heard the comparison used when discussing jobs. There tends to be rhetoric in the US that transitioning away from coal and oil will lead to large job losses, so this is an anecdote disproving it.
- rsynnott 8mo agoI mean, assuming it's true, the obvious conclusion would be that there should be reasonable limits on what is done to save such a small industry. Looks like there are 40-45k people employed in coal mining in the US, depending on who you ask. _Even if there was no downside to keeping it going_, that would probably only be worth modest government action to keep it on life support; it's simply not a big industry.
- jna_sh 8mo agoThere are more people eating sandwiches than committing school shootings. This is insightful.
- WithinReason 8mo agoWhich politician is campaigning to save school shooter jobs?
- ceejayoz 8mo ago[flagged]
- wiseowise 8mo agoBefore or after he bit the bullet?
- actionfromafar 8mo agoThe NRA kind maybe?
- phibr0 8mo agohttps://archive.ph/bOoNL https://archive.ph/bOoNL
- rwyinuse 8mo ago[flagged]
- sebastianconcpt 8mo agoAnd how China compares its 2024 to 2025?
- tchalla 8mo agoWhy should it be compared 2024 2025 and not 100+ years?
- lofties 8mo agoWhat does it matter? Two wrongs don’t make a right. Edit: cursory search shows a flat/falling trend.[0] [0]https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-18-months/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
- lm28469 8mo agoIf you take life long CO2 emissions they have a fat margin before getting to US levels. And they've manufacturing 75% of the gadgets you buy in the west
- SPICLK2 8mo agoThere's no margin on averting the Climate Catastrophe!
- engineer_22 8mo ago[flagged]
- charcircuit 8mo agoThe US has gotten tremendous value from AI agents, so I think the trade off was worth it for 2025.
- alpineman 8mo agoAnd we represent 0.1% of the population at best. Not really sustainable. 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.
- xxs 8mo ago>The US has gotten tremendous value from AI agents Any quote on that part...
- awjlogan 8mo agoI read this with a large /s on the end...
- xxs 8mo agoFair point - yet the very official US stance is to reduce regulation and what not. If it was the sarcasm, it'd be the "US population". I could contribute 'tremendous' for obvious reasons but still. That would likely the 1st time to miss sarcasm... need few more words not the '/s' (I never use /s)
- awjlogan 8mo agoHah, also fair point - there are plenty of people who would say this completely earnestly! :)
- Sharlin 8mo agoI think you mean "NVIDIA and data centers have gotten enormous value".
- hermitcrab 8mo agoFlorida is going to be one of the first places under water.
- tjpnz 8mo agoI feel bad for the alligators.
- neonnoodle 8mo agoThey’ll probably have a decent chance!
- hermitcrab 8mo agoI don't think alligators can handle sustained exposure to salt water.
- fpoling 8mo agoAlligators will enjoy warmer Florida with more swamps.
- blell 8mo agoThe US understands that cheap, dependable energy is vital for the economy.
- hshdhdhj4444 8mo agoWhich is why it subsidized coal so it’s competitive with every other source of energy?
- nemomarx 8mo agoWe have cheaper energy than coal even without renewables. Subsidizing end of life coal plants that were reasonably going to be shut down isn't cheap and honestly it doesn't seem very dependable, build some natural gas plants or something.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- vitro 8mo agoCheap? Depends on how you look at it. What about treating all those respiratory illnesses caused by burning coal? Is that accounted for in the price of the electricity as well?
- vanviegen 8mo agoI used to worry about stuff like this and the climate in general. Thanks to Trump, not anymore though. I now worry about WW3 and the collapse of civilization instead.
- Y-bar 8mo agoWhile we arguably are at a brink of WW3 today considering the invasion of Ukraine, China rattling sabres like never before towards Taiwan, Trump being hungry for Greenland, internal strife in Iran, the actions of Israel… I bet that the next major flareup will be directly attributable to climate change such as a large drought affecting multiple nations.
- JKCalhoun 8mo agoYou need to define major.
- Y-bar 8mo agoWhat of ”major” makes it ambiguous for you?
- JKCalhoun 8mo agoYou mentioned a number of flare-ups: Ukraine, Iran protests, Israel. And these of course are not climate related. Trump also snatched the president of Venezuela. Major flare-up? Or maybe it missed the deadline. I don't disagree that climate change pressures are going to lead to strife, just the "next major flare-up" part.
- neves 8mo agoIn India and China coal emissions went down motivated by renovables
- bob1029 8mo agoIn many cases the best solution would be to retrofit the existing facilities and leverage the transmission infrastructure that is already in place. Retrofit doesn't necessarily mean we continue to burn coal, but it might. Without the aid of a time machine, continuing to burn coal (or even restarting a plant) for a limited period of time may have less incremental impact than other options. 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-plants-converted-or-replaced-gas-2010-eia-says https://www.publicpower.org/periodical/article/over-100-coal...
- b40d-48b2-979e 8mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Public_Power_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Public_Power_Associat... Your link is from a lobbyist for energy providers. I don't trust their opinions are biased in the public's favor.
- jedimastert 8mo agoAll of those energy providers appear to be public utilities, and not privately owned.
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago"The researchers identified two main reasons for the uptick. U.S. electricity demand grew at an unusually fast pace, driven in part by an expansion of power-hungry data centers for artificial intelligence. To meet that demand, electric utilities burned about 13 percent more coal last year than they did in 2024. ... ...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."
- hliyan 8mo agoSadly related: > 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-pollution.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/climate/trump-epa-air-pol...
- schiffern 8mo ago>calculate only the cost to industry What a farce. 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.
- blurbleblurble 8mo agoFunny cause in the long run shareholders are just as effed as the rest of us, so this is not protection
- chii 8mo agoIn the long run, we're all dead. So shareholders might suffer the same fate, but they're more comfortable before we all drown.
- blurbleblurble 8mo agoTheir comfort is hollow and false
- actionfromafar 8mo agoIf they can afford the oxygen tanks, their comfort is slightly better than the rest of us. It's what makes America great again!
- cmiles8 8mo agoAI is partly to blame here. 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.
- energy123 8mo agoIt is, but degrowth is an election losing proposition. Any talk like this needs to be transparently non-hostile to demand for political purposes. The solution should be something like requiring them to build nuclear or renewable energy, or tax them and put the money into a subsidy fund for clean energy.
- joelthelion 8mo agoThere is a real need for education of the masses. Not destroying the planet should win elections, not lose them.
- energy123 8mo agoI favor public education, but let's not kid ourselves, there is not a polity on earth where degrowth would get more than 20% support. It's a weird social media echo chamber artefact that will exclusively sabotage efforts to decarbonize.
- viraptor 8mo agoIn a sane election system, 20% gives a party a significant position in the government that influences the coalition and drives some of the future decisions. Just not in the two-party circus.
- rob74 8mo ago...or everyone else decides to marginalize that 20% party and allies with the far right instead (I don't want to defend the US system, but proportional representation is not a panacea either).
- contrarian1234 8mo agoi feel the fact coal is so often considered separately from oil and gas to be very suspicious. Cant help but feel demonizing coal is plays into the interests of petro states. 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
- pipo234 8mo agoThere is evidence that coal has worse environmental impact than other fossil fuels. For one, burning gas produces CO2 and water, whereas burning coal results in just CO2 (+ soot and other pollutants). Another is that (open) coal mines have devastating effects on large land areas. So yes, best leave all fossil fuels where they are, but coal is especially bad.
- jedimastert 8mo agoI have a personal vendetta against coal in particular because of the way it destroys the entire communities and towns. Coal got an early head start in environmentalism villainy because it has immediate and very visible environmental impacts in the process of getting it out of the ground.
- bell-cot 8mo agoPretty much ignored in comments here: > 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?
- lpcvoid 8mo agoAnd why not both? You can criticize the Trump admin's energy policy, and advocate for thermal isolation of homes at the same time.
- bell-cot 8mo agoSo long as you have infinite resources, sure. 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.
- andrewblossom 8mo agoWe were doing that through efficiency-focused rebates and incentives that the current administration decided are not worth continuing. Instead they're "unleashing American energy" and deregulating any emissions-producing industry they can.
- bell-cot 8mo ago> ...the current administration decided are not worth continuing... 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.
- themaninthedark 8mo agoBut this should reverse again as more solar/other sources come online right? My understanding from news is that coal is more expensive than even natural gas.
- DoctorOW 8mo agoThat's the exact reason it's being subsidized with tax dollars, to try and keep it competitive with other energy sources.
- jedimastert 8mo agoThe current administration is actively undermining pretty much any attempt to move towards renewables.
- themaninthedark 8mo ago>undermining :) 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.
- exabrial 8mo agoThe biggest setback is all of these companies lecturing us about being green, then sucking down power for cryptocurrency, and now LLMs. In my mind, the only viable way out is the power density of nuclear. Datacenter should not be ordered by taxpayer subsidized energy.
- ViewTrick1002 8mo ago> In my mind, the only viable way out is the power density of nuclear. 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.
- exabrial 8mo agoLaughably, neither can wind in fact, and there’s still plenty of open question on if wind is even net positive at all. 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.
- ViewTrick1002 8mo agoPlease give some sources. Because that is not the conclusion in the energy industry. 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-growth-meets-all-new-electricity-demand-in-the-first-three-quarters-of-2025/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/solar-and-wind-growt...
- Forgeties79 8mo agoThis has to be the 4th or 5th time I’ve shared this link on HN. Sadly the WH made it very clear that they do not care about the real cost of coal. Here they proudly shout about “beautiful clean coal.” Anyone who believes this ridiculous rebranding of coal really should not be making decisions on it, and those who know better but repeat it are even worse: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/reinvigorating-americas-beautiful-clean-coal-industry-and-amending-executive-order-14241/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/rein... We’re moving backwards. They actually think we want to work in coal mines again by the hundreds of thousands.
- maxglute 8mo agoIs it at least clean coal?
- fny 8mo agoI'm a huge green energy supporter, but the data belies the headline. These types of headlines are often leverage to discredit the transition. 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.
- akamaka 8mo agoGreat analysis.