Air pollution from coal-fired power plants spiked in 2025, a striking reversal of long-term progress in air quality as the Trump administration boosted coal use. <\/p>\n
The emission increases were among the largest in at least a quarter-century<\/a>, on a percentage basis, as the bulk of about 210 power plants registered increased sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions, EPA numbers show. <\/p>\n Releases of sulfur dioxide<\/a>, a lung-damaging compound key to acid rain formation, soared by more than 18 percent, from about 597,000 tons in 2024 to 705,000 tons in 2025, according to data compiled by POLITICO\u2019s E&E News.<\/p>\n During the same period, the coal-fired power sector\u2019s emissions of smog-forming nitrogen oxides<\/a> swelled by some 12 percent, from 464,000 to 521,000 tons.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have championed coal power, arguing that it\u2019s needed to ensure the United States\u2019 dominance in artificial intelligence. Trump made reviving the flagging coal industry a national priority, with his administration forcing plants to stay online past their scheduled retirement dates.<\/p>\n Research shows that pollution from the coal-burning plants poses \u201ca serious risk to human health,\u201d said Dan Cohan, an environmental engineering professor at Rice University. While the industry\u2019s total emissions were still well below the levels of even a decade ago, continued increases would threaten one of the Clean Air Act\u2019s signature accomplishments.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that much more emissions were coming out of them last year was a worrisome sign,\u201d Cohan said.<\/p>\n At EPA, where Administrator Lee Zeldin last year pledged to ensure clean air<\/a> for all Americans, spokesperson Brigit Hirsch did not address written questions asking how more pollution meshes with that promise or what factors might be behind the increases.<\/p>\n But Hirsch noted in an email steep drops in airborne concentrations of both sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides since 1990.<\/p>\n \u201cCherry-picking one year of data while ignoring the overall downward trend in emission levels is just misleading and meant to distract from the hundreds of environmental wins the Trump EPA has racked up over the past year-plus,\u201d Hirsch said.<\/p>\n But Cohan and other experts view burgeoning electricity demand as a driving force.<\/p>\n Amid a boom in the construction of power-hungry computing centers, even coal-fired units \u201care starting to see more generation,\u201d said James Staudt, president of Andover Technology Partners, a Massachusetts consulting firm.<\/p>\n \u2018Total annual emissions increased\u2019<\/p>\n Coal is by far the highest-polluting fossil fuel, and coal-fired generation grew by 13 percent last year, according to recently released U.S. Energy Information Administration data<\/a>.<\/p>\n At PacifiCorp\u2019s Hunter Power Plant in Utah, for example, NOx emissions skyrocketed 78 percent last year from about 4,500 tons in 2024 to more than 8,000 tons. In an email, PacifiCorp spokesperson David Eskelsen attributed the jump to an increase in \u201cutilization\u201d at the roughly 1,600-megawatt plant.<\/p>\n \u201cData shows that Hunter generated substantially more electricity in 2025 than in 2024, and total annual emissions increased accordingly,\u201d Eskelsen said, adding that the plant remains in compliance \u201cwith all applicable regulatory limits.\u201d He did not reply to a follow-up question asking whether the trend is so far continuing this year.<\/p>\n Under Trump, moreover, EPA is poised to dismantle existing regulations that would further curb coal plant pollution. While two years ago the Supreme Court temporarily blocked implementation of a Biden-era \u201cgood neighbor\u201d plan aimed at curbing smog-forming emissions that cross state lines, the agency is now taking first steps<\/a> toward a permanent rollback.<\/p>\n Also on the administration\u2019s chopping block is a tighter limit adopted during former President Joe Biden\u2019s term on airborne concentrations of the fine particulate matter often dubbed soot. Both SO2 and NOx can help spawn such particles. The Trump administration is now asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to throw out the stricter standard. A ruling is pending.<\/p>\n Coal-burning power plants have historically been a top source of the two pollutants. From 1995 through 2023, however, the sector\u2019s SO2 emissions plunged 96 percent while annual NOx releases fell 90 percent, according to the most recent numbers on an online \u201cprogress report.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Both industry and environmental groups regularly tout those drops as a success story demonstrating that the United States can have cleaner air, economic growth and a dependable electric grid.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that the long-term trend has shown that we\u2019ve been able to cut pollution without hurting reliability,\u201d said Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis at the Natural Resources Defense Council.<\/p>\n In her own recent dissection of the data from EPA\u2019s Clean Air Markets program, Levin found that the overall growth in SO2 emissions last year was disproportionately higher among 71 plants granted presidential exemptions last year from other regulations issued during Biden\u2019s term that strengthened power sector limits on mercury and other toxic pollutants.<\/p>\n