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U.S. Emissions Jumped in 2025 as Coal Power Rebounded

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/climate/us-emissions-2025-coal-power.html
67•fleahunter•1h ago

Comments

phibr0•57m ago
https://archive.ph/bOoNL
rwyinuse•53m ago
I have full confidence in Trump's administration doing everything it can to make the planet a worse place to live for future generations.
lostlogin•19m ago
Even that is hopeful statement. What about all of us, now?
lpcvoid•15m ago
We are pretty fucked right now, all things considered.
lpcvoid•13m ago
But they owned the libs, how can you not see that value proposition!
sebastianconcpt•47m ago
And how China compares its 2024 to 2025?
lofties•47m ago
What 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-ha...

lm28469•44m ago
If 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•30m ago
There's no margin on averting the Climate Catastrophe!
engineer_22•13m ago
They produce over double CO2 USA does
ceejayoz•9m ago
For 4x the population, and much of that is while making our stuff.

And they aren’t making coal a culture war point or canceling renewables projects for ideological reasons.

gpderetta•9m ago
pro capita?
imjonse•43m ago
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
energy123•43m ago
China and India coal usage dropped for the first time in 52 years[1].

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...

joe_mamba•41m ago
>China and India coal usage dropped for the first time in 52 years

Isn't it because they're now getting Russian oil and gas at rock bottom prices from western sanctions?

defrost•33m ago
No.

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).

rjtavares•32m ago
No, it's because of renewables. Share of oil in total energy consumption hasn't increased since the sanctions, while wind and solar have been consistently increasing. Coal is down (again, as a share of total energy consumption).

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china

energy123•15m ago
China is trying to eliminate oil because of the Malacca Dilemma. The US and allies control the seas as part of containment policy. The US also has the Middle East on lockdown, every gulf country in particular. China has a little base in Djibouti and influence over a collapsing IRGC I guess, but not enough to secure any routes. China only has land-based power projection in Eurasia which exerts some limited but insufficient control over land corridors. This is the real incentive behind China's renewables push. That it also addresses global warming is a very welcome side-effect.
lostlogin•10m ago
> Malacca Dilemma.

I was unaware of this - thanks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malacca_dilemma

citrin_ru•6m ago
China is also getting coal from Russia at rock bottom prices. Coal is no longer cost efficient source but for a big country like China shifting away will take time.
hunglee2•38m ago
US bad, China good basically.

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

engineer_22•15m ago
China 12 billion tons CO2 and steady, USA 6 billion tons CO2 and falling.

US bad, China very bad.

fpoling•12m ago
China population is 4 times of US and a lot of CO2 there comes from US outsourcing energy-intensive production.
enraged_camel•10m ago
Climate doesn't care about population or per capita metrics. The only metric that matters is CO2 PPM.
ceejayoz•8m ago
So all China needs to do is split in two to halve their emissions?
engineer_22•9m ago
Great sounds like they know how they can improve. If they halve their population they'll get it down to USA levels!
dannyfreeman•11m ago
Try per capita
defrost•11m ago
Now do cumulative over past century, then account for US consumption of goods now produced in China.
Keats•10m ago
and per capita?
engineer_22•8m ago
That's just over 10^-9 degrees Celsius per capita
neves•7m ago
This kind of denial prevents any solution for global warming.

- 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

engineer_22•5m ago
No denying that US CO2 emissions down 16% since 2005
boudin•5m ago
China is doing so while western countries delegated a lot of its manufacturing to China though.

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.

FactolSarin•29m ago
Why do I get the feeling that if the answer is that they're polluting more as well, parent will argue that makes it OK for the US, as if we should be following their lead. But if the answer is they're making progress on lowering emissions, he'll argue the opposite?
Sharlin•28m ago
China will almost certainly never reach the cumulative emissions that the US already reached in the 70s.
tchalla•14m ago
Why should it be compared 2024 2025 and not 100+ years?
charcircuit•38m ago
The US has gotten tremendous value from AI agents, so I think the trade off was worth it for 2025.
alpineman•33m ago
And 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•28m ago
>The US has gotten tremendous value from AI agents

Any quote on that part...

awjlogan•18m ago
I read this with a large /s on the end...
Sharlin•26m ago
I think you mean "NVIDIA and data centers have gotten enormous value".
hermitcrab•33m ago
Florida is going to be one of the first places under water.
tjpnz•25m ago
I feel bad for the alligators.
neonnoodle•19m ago
They’ll probably have a decent chance!
blell•29m ago
The US understands that cheap, dependable energy is vital for the economy.
hshdhdhj4444•29m ago
Which is why it subsidized coal so it’s competitive with every other source of energy?
nemomarx•20m ago
We 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.
vitro•13m ago
Cheap? 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?
walthamstow•25m ago
I read recently that there are more people working as yoga teachers in the USA than are employed in the coal industry as a whole.
vanviegen•16m ago
I 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.
neves•14m ago
In India and China coal emissions went down motivated by renovables
metalman•14m ago
pound for pound ,Americas biggest import is oxygen
bob1029•2m ago
In 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...

JumpCrisscross•1m 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."

Ask HN: Infrastructure teams – what's your biggest compliance headache?

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