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- Hacker News
- a drop in the bucketby AuthAuth
- They gave numbers for the increase in coal, but not the increase in CO2. It's hard to know what the impact is
- 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)by toomuchtodo - 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.by mc32
- 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%by skmurphy - 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.
- The US loves winning!
- Well then
> US scraps limits on emissions from coal and gas power plants
by BiraIgnacio - Take all of the ethanol subsidies and build nuclear, cover parking lots with solar.
This is all we want.
by exabrial - 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).
by pstuart - 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?