While unfortunate due to bad policy and poor governance outcomes, these coal plants are uneconomical, and will continue to drag themselves to retirement or closure. New gas turbine pipeline is ~5-10 years long (only three companies in the world build them, and they are output constrained due to labor and supply chain limitations), so they are not an option luckily. Renewables and battery manufacturing and deployment flywheels continue to spin up. "Sucks to suck" but this problem is temporary, and the AI bubble will deflate eventually (destroying some component of this data center power demand).
The activists of the 70s made it so we were never able to really innovate Nuclear energy. If they instead supported it, we might not even have any climate issues today.
While unfortunate due to bad policy and poor governance outcomes, these coal plants are uneconomical, and will continue to drag themselves to retirement or closure. New gas turbine pipeline is ~5-10 years long (only three companies in the world build them, and they are output constrained due to labor and supply chain limitations), so they are not an option luckily. Renewables and battery manufacturing and deployment flywheels continue to spin up. "Sucks to suck" but this problem is temporary, and the AI bubble will deflate eventually (destroying some component of this data center power demand).
China Cleantech Exports Data Explorer - https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...
Gas-Turbine Crunch Threatens Demand Bonanza in Asia - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-10-07/gas-tu... | https://archive.today/z4Ixw - October 7th, 2025
China electrotech exports are surging. Here's what's at stake for U.S. - https://www.axios.com/2025/10/06/china-clean-energy-export-s... - October 6th, 2025
Planned retirements of U.S. coal-fired electric-generating capacity to increase in 2025 - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64604 - February 25th, 2025
Nowhere to go but down for U.S. coal capacity, generation - https://ieefa.org/resources/nowhere-go-down-us-coal-capacity... - October 24th, 2024
US Coal Plant Map Retirement Tracker - https://www.sierraclub.org/coal/coal-plant-map
The activists of the 70s made it so we were never able to really innovate Nuclear energy. If they instead supported it, we might not even have any climate issues today.