A sudden surge in electricity demand from AI supercomputing—and the Trump administration’s rapid rollback of pollution safeguards—is prompting states and utilities to postpone coal-plant retirements, reversing years of progress on U.S. air quality.
For more than a decade, America’s coal-fired power plants were marching steadily toward retirement. That decline—driven by cheaper natural gas, stricter pollution rules, and the rapid rise of renewables—produced steep drops in toxic emissions and helped stabilize the nation’s carbon output.
A potent combination of skyrocketing electricity demand from artificial intelligence data centers and a wave of regulatory rollbacks from the Trump administration is injecting new life into some of the country’s most polluting infrastructure. The result: coal plants that were slated to close years ago are suddenly being kept online well into the 2030s, and in many cases allowed to release more mercury, soot, and climate-warming gases than before.
