Falling coal consumption has led to lower U.S. climate pollution over the last two decades. Those days could be over, at least for now.
Last year, carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants increased 4 percent, according to a review of EPA data, as coal generation surged during President Donald Trump’s first year back in office. It marks the third-largest annual increase in power sector emissions over the last 20 years — and could foreshadow a future in which climate pollution is increasingly intractable.
While most of the recent jump in coal generation is owed to seasonal factors, like a cold winter and higher natural gas prices, efforts by utilities and the Trump administration to delay or prevent plant closures could buoy coal generation. It comes after years of falling coal use has accounted for the vast majority of U.S. emissions reductions since 2005.
The shift could have broad consequences for the environment. Climate advocates had hoped that rising electric vehicle sales would lead to a decline in transportation emissions, but those hopes have been largely dashed by the Trump administration’s moves to slash tax credits for EVs. Its plans to roll back fuel economy standards for new vehicles could also increase emissions.
“There’s not really a lot of reasons to expect that decarbonization is just going to kind of happen on its own,” said Emily Grubert, a professor who studies climate policy at the University of Notre Dame. “I think the driver of emissions reductions has to be policy at this point because there’s really not something else that’s structurally going to happen on its own.”
Coal generation increased 13 percent in 2025, according to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration last week. Those spikes have become rare. Coal has only posted annual increases in generation five times in the last 20 years — due to the fuel’s long-term economic challenges.
The U.S. coal fleet is old, and utilities aren’t building new plants. Analysts said it is hard to imagine seeing a new coal facility being built. The fuel is relatively costly compared to its competitors and remains exposed to long-term regulatory risk from Washington.
“I think it’s too early to overreact to a single year data point,” said Ben King, an emissions analyst at the Rhodium Group, an economic consulting firm. Renewable installations are expected to remain strong over the next two years, as companies race to finish projects in time to qualify for expiring federal tax credits.
“The fundamentals are still solid for continued progress on emissions,” he said.
But other analysts were less sanguine. The increase in coal generation offset what was otherwise a banner year for renewables. Solar generation grew 34 percent, while wind power was up 3 percent. Collectively, wind and solar generated more electricity (760 terrawatt-hours) than coal (737 TWh), EIA figures show. Gas generation, meanwhile, was down 3 percent.
But renewable growth on its own is not enough to push emissions down at a time when electricity demand is growing, analysts say. Take the example of Texas, which installed an eye-popping 15 gigawatts of new solar, battery and wind capacity last year. (California, which ranked second nationally in renewable installations, installed 5 GW.)
Texas solar generation surged as a result, jumping 41 percent in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid serving most of the state. Solar now ranks as ERCOT’s third-largest source of power, ahead of coal and behind gas and wind.
Yet the solar boom was not enough to cover the growing demand for electricity in ERCOT, where demand grew nearly 5 percent over 2024 levels. The rising need for power fueled an 8 percent increase in coal generation. That led carbon emissions to rise 1 percent at Texas power plants, from 210 million tons to 213 million tons.
“I think there’s been a lot of people that have been hopeful that the fact that wind and solar are pretty cheap means that a lot of the decarbonization just happens. But I don’t think that we’re really going to see that at the levels that would make a meaningful difference,” Grubert said.
Coal has long been the main driver of U.S. emission reductions. Climate pollution from coal plants has fallen 61 percent between 2005 and 2025, driving a 36 percent drop in overall power sector emissions, according to EPA data.
Greenhouse gases from most other sectors of the economy have been flat or have increased slightly over that period. Total U.S. emissions are down 18 percent over the last 20 years, according to a recent estimate by the Rhodium Group.
The potential climate impacts of coal’s rebound were particularly stark in Indiana. The Hoosier state saw CO2 emissions from its power plants increase 8.5 million tons, the largest absolute increase of any state in the country, after coal generation leaped more than 20 percent last year, EPA figures show.
Indiana is a national hub for data center construction. Many of the state’s utilities are looking to use gas generation to fulfill growing electricity demand from data centers in the long term, said Ben Inskeep, program director at the Citizens Action Council, a public interest group in the state.
In the short term, they’re turning to coal, by postponing plans to retire power plants or by converting them to gas, he said.
“It’s one of the big reasons why we’re so concerned about the data center load growth,” said Inskeep, adding that high prices for backup power “could be helping to keep some of these marginal coal units online because there’s so much demand.”
U.S. emissions trajectory looks largely unchanged through 2030, said King of the Rhodium Group. Most economic trends have already been baked in. The full emissions impact of Trump’s policy decisions to cut fuel economy standards, eliminate EV subsidies and slash EPA regulations on power plants will be felt after he leaves office.
But one factor could swing the short-term emissions balance, King said.
The Department of Energy issued emergency orders in 2025 directing five coal plants to stay open past their retirement date. The impact of those orders was relatively modest last year. Four of the five orders were issued at the end of December.
But the environmental effect would grow if those orders are extended and broadened to more plants, King said.
“The biggest X Factor the next few years is just extra market stuff,” he said.
