Coal use dropped in China and India in 2025. It rose in USA, hiking energy costs.

Coal experienced a historic decline in China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, in 2025, marking the first time in 52 years that both countries have seen a decline in coal generation at the same time.

Meanwhile, the world’s largest historical polluter, the US, ticked up its use of the worst method of power generation, which coincided with higher energy costs amid an affordability crisis.

In 2025, US coal power generation went up by 13%, quite a big chunk for a power generation method that has otherwise been declining rapidly.

This worked to fuel a 2.4% increase in US carbon emissions, which have also otherwise been gradually falling for around two decades now. The US remains the largest all-time contributor to climate change, and it’s not even close.

But… let’s not declare it a victory for coal just yet.

In the early 2000s, coal made up half of US electricity generation, and in 2025, it was 17%… up from about 15% the year prior. Put that way, it doesn’t seem like a huge change.

The reason for coal’s spike was due to an increase in electricity demand, largely fueled by data centers. This rise in consumption is a departure from two decades of flat electricity demand.

However, most of that new demand – 61% of it – was met by solar anyway. And while coal grew by 13% last year, solar grew by 34%, and that’s despite a hostile policy environment. And the government still predicts solar to grow rapidly and coal to shrink in coming years.

A spike in methane gas prices also contributed to coal’s rise domestically. That spike was a result of severe weather (thanks, climate change) and shifting global demand contributed to by Russia’s war in Ukraine, which led to the US exporting more liquified methane gas to Europe as the continent finally sought to get off of its addiction to Russian gas (and instead, chose a different hostile nation…).

This uptick in coal use came along with higher energy costs for Americans. The cost of coal power has risen faster than inflation, while renewables remain cheaper than fossil fuels, and a transition could save Americans hundreds of billions of dollars.

China and India are going in the right direction

But that’s not the only way global energy demand changed in 2025.

Unlike the US’ increase in coal power (and carbon emissions) in 2025, both China and India reduced their use of coal power – the first time both countries have reduced their coal use in the same year since 1973. Coal use fell by 3% in India and 1.6% in China in 2025.

The reduction in coal use is even more impressive given that electricity demand increased in each country, much like it did in the US – just without the accompanied rise in coal use. The new demand was met and exceeded by renewable deployment in each country.

As a result, China’s emissions, which had been rising rapidly in recent years, may have plateaued. It’s possible this could be a temporary pause followed by a future increase, but if China continues renewable deployment and continues electrifying transportation (which has put China close to peak oil consumption), emissions could turn downwards once and for all.

India is a bigger question, as the country is earlier in its development cycle. But if the country focuses on renewables to help fuel its development, it could save a lot of emissions – and a lot of money.

Electrek’s Take

Here’s the thing: coal is dead. For two decades it has been in decline in the US, and the reason is because it’s simply bad. It’s deadly for all of society and for the workers who mine it, it’s expensive (even when you don’t account for the cost of pollution), and it’s the least reliable form of power generation we have.

That hasn’t, however, stopped the enemies of America, who literally say your life is worth nothing, from trying to revive it.

The republican party, amid their goals of transferring your money to the ultra wealthy, starting idiotic wars, making you poorer and sicker, and offshoring American industry, have also tried to revive coal.

This story suggests that they might have had some success in 2025, but that success seems more like a fluke, all things considered. Policy changes haven’t really taken hold yet as energy projects take time to plan, and external factors seem to have driven the rise more than anything else. It’s unlikely for this tick up in coal use to continue in any meaningful way.

Meanwhile, India and China, the two most populous countries in the world, are often blamed for high carbon emissions – often from the same entities who are trying to increase US emissions. But here we see that those countries are going in the right direction, while the US goes in the wrong one.

What’s more silly is that that criticism often comes from a country that has emit more than both combined. Not only that, but each Chinese person emits about half as much annual carbon as each American, and each Indian emits about one seventh as much (with India still emitting less total annual carbon than the US despite having 5x the population). And as we’ve just seen, they’re now going in the right direction, while the US currently isn’t.

And besides, it’s not productive. Even if the US wasn’t as bad of an emitter as it is, the problem of carbon emissions is global and everyone needs to act to solve it. When the boat is sinking, you don’t bicker about who’s to blame, you grab a bucket and start bailing.

This is, after all, what the Paris Agreement was all about – it eschewed binding targets precisely in order to increase international cooperation, so that this sort of bickering wouldn’t happen (though some people didn’t get the memo).

Thankfully, if the coal rise from 2025 is indeed transitory as predicted, and trends continue in India and China, maybe next year we’ll see coal drop in all three countries in the same year – sending a pretty clear signal that the world’s worst energy source is dead, despite the worst efforts of the worst people.

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