David Bridges
Key Insights
- Energy Source: The increasing demand for data centers is causing a delay in the retirement of coal-burning units.
- Health Impact: A significant number of deaths have been linked to emissions from coal power plants between 1999 and 2020.
- Policy Changes: The Trump administration has rolled back emissions limits, impacting coal’s operational status.
- Market Dynamics: Current market conditions are reviving coal usage despite its environmental drawbacks.
The fanciful, futuristic dream of an AI era has been powered by present-day energy all along. Increasingly, though, it looks like it’s going to be powered by yesterday’s energy too, by which I mean coal, an energy source with climate change externalities comparable to other combustible fuel, but with deadly effects on the local environment.
Now, according to a Politico report, itself drawn from a report by the think tank Frontier Group, utilities’ plans to retire 30 coal-burning units have now been delayed in order to supply energy to data centers.
As EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin wrote in a Fox News op-ed (also quoted by Politico), “To meet growing demand from domestic manufacturing and the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence data centers, America’s coal-powered powerplants must remain in operation.”
Throughout most of the Obama era and the first two Trump years—the span from 2010 to the beginning of 2019—announcements from US energy companies heralded the coming shutdowns of 546 coal generating units. That means 102 gigawatts, a decommissioning project the size of (by my math) New York City in the summer ten times over.
As Grist pointed out all the way back in 2012, coal’s decline appeared to have little to do with environmental restrictions. It was “primarily due to changing market conditions, not environmental rule revisions, which have trended towards more lenient requirements and schedules.”
Similarly, market conditions today are bringing it back. Look out, lungs.
A report on the National Institutes of Health website (somehow it’s still up) notes that “between 1999 and 2020, 460,000 deaths would not have occurred in the absence of emission from the coal power plants.”
Obama did, for the record, eventually impose emissions limits target coal, and the first Trump Administration set out to annihilate them during Trump’s first year in office. That effort succeeded in 2019. In his second administration, Trump has seemingly set out to increase not only the ubiquity of coal, but its potential deadliness, by further chipping away at what safeguards there are. Politico says almost 70 power plants are being allowed to simply not comply to 2027 mercury-and-soot limitations from the EPA while the EPA crafts new, more lenient laws.
And as Gizmodo noted earlier this year, Trump has praised “beautiful, clean coal” while dismantling workplace protections for miners. Unions have sued the administration for pausing long-sought silica dust regulations—rules the Department of Labor estimated would save 1,000 lives.
So, of course, Trump will give himself credit as the savior of the coal industry. Trump didn’t invent AI demand, but you have to admit, he’s certainly sweetening market conditions for the shareholders who extract, profit from coal—all while workers and bystanders pay the price, sometimes with their lives.
