Demand Up, Mix Backslides

Coal plants churned out more electricity. Power-hungry data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations drove up demand. And colder winter temperatures meant more furnaces working overtime.

After two years of declines in the amount of greenhouse gases the United States pumped into the atmosphere, the nation’s planet-warming emissions rose an estimated 2.4 percent during 2025, according to an analysis published Tuesday by the independent economic research firm Rhodium Group.

“This is not the right direction,” said Ben King, a director on the U.S. energy team at Rhodium and co-author of Tuesday’s report. “Seeing upward emissions levels in the United States, on the whole, is not great. It is problematic for the prospects of meeting long-term decarbonization.”

While the increase represents a single year amid nearly two decades of gradual declines, it also underscores how the world’s second-largest emitter behind China has struggled to cut carbon pollution in ways that scientists say is essential to avoiding the worsening consequences of climate change.

The last annual increase in the nation’s emissions came in 2022, as the country was emerging from the economic shocks of a pandemic.

This time, Rhodium’s report found that the uptick in U.S. emissions during 2025 was driven primarily by colder winter temperatures that drove up demand for heating. Higher natural gas prices, coupled with that greater demand, also boosted electricity from coal plants by 13 percent over the previous year — only the second time in the past decade that coal generation has increased.

“It’s not like you would say coal is back,” King said, but the change did return coal generation to roughly 2022 levels.

In addition, the growing demand for electricity from data centers, crypto mining operations and other large load customers fueled higher power consumption, particularly in Texas, the Mid-Atlantic and Ohio Valley region.

Under President Joe Biden, the United States said it would aim to cut its emissions as much as 66 percent by 2035, when compared with 2005 levels — part of an international pact in which nations collectively have promised to limit Earth’s warming.

The reality is turning out to be much less ambitious.

For years, even under administrations that promoted clean energy and tried to phase out reliance on fossil fuels, the United States has fallen short of its stated climate goals. But Rhodium’s analysis projects that the United States is now on pace to reduce its emissions about 35 percent, and potentially less, by 2035.

President Donald Trump has wholeheartedly embraced the increased production of oil, gas and coal. He has withdrawn the United States from the Paris climate accord and called climate change a “scam” and a “hoax.” His administration has rolled back numerous environmental regulations, with more deregulation to come.

The Trump administration halted major offshore wind energy projects, and along with the Republican-led Congress, sought to slash Biden-era subsidies for clean energy.

Despite all that, Tuesday’s Rhodium analysis shows the rise in emissions during the past year is largely not a result of who occupies the White House.

“We don’t see a major signal here of the Trump administration having an impact on emissions yet,” King said. “But there are signals within this data that point to the ways that impact can be felt.”

Still, the report warned, Trump’s far-reaching policy changes “could have increasing effects in the years to come.”

In another potentially troubling sign, emissions during 2025 grew faster than the overall economy, according to preliminary data, Rhodium said. That snapped a three-year run in which economic growth outpaced emissions growth — a trend that must continue over time if the country is to shrink its carbon footprint significantly.

There were also continued bright spots during 2025 for clean energy, even as it has fallen out of favor in the nation’s current political environment.

The Rhodium analysis found that the fastest-growing power generation source during the year was solar, which leaped by 34 percent — the biggest jump since 2017. And transportation emissions, which have become the biggest source of greenhouse gases, remained largely flat over the past year due to the adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles.

Tuesday’s analysis comes soon after European scientists said recently that 2025 is likely to register as one of the three hottest years on record.

It was a year when average global temperatures routinely eclipsed a threshold set during the 2015 Paris agreement, in which nations vowed to try to liming warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial times.

It was also a year that brought another wave of extreme and deadly weather to the planet, including crippling heat waves, destructive wildfires and menacing hurricanes — disasters that scientists say will become more common the more the atmosphere heats up.

The United States is far from the only country that has not lived up to its promises to cut emissions as rapidly as necessary to limit the warming of the planet.

A November report from Global Carbon Budget found that despite elements of progress, carbon emissions from fossil fuels were projected to rise to an all-time high during 2025. It also found that the most ambitious goals of the Paris agreement were steadily slipping from reach.

Last month, a report from the International Energy Agency found that global coal demand was on course to rise slightly in 2025, reaching a record 8.85 billion tons. In coming years, the report found, the largest increases in coal consumption are expected in places such as India and Southeast Asia.

Even then, the long-term trajectory is likely to hold. “Our forecast for the coming years has not changed substantially from a year ago: we expect global coal demand to plateau before edging down by 2030,” Keisuke Sadamori, IEA’s director of energy markets and security, said in a statement.

As for keeping track of what happens in the United States, that could be growing more difficult. Rhodium noted in Tuesday’s report that Trump has taken steps to stop publishing key data about the nation’s emissions.

“Given the Trump administration’s hostility to collecting and reporting data related to climate change, we may not receive any further inventories under this administration,” the group wrote, adding, “The loss of this data means we are heading into murkier waters when it comes to understanding the second-largest emitter of [greenhouse gases] in the world.”

Still, the authors vowed to keep trying to track the nation’s trajectory, saying, “Emissions and their impacts persist even when government does not count them.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2026/01/13/us-emissions-increase/