U.S. Power Sector Emissions Spiked 4% in 2025

Current conditions: After forming into Tropical Storm Bertha late Monday, the system is barreling toward the Florida Panhandle as it makes landfall as far west as Texas • In the Pacific, Hurricane Fausto has strength as it heads toward Hawaii but remains a Category 1 storm • Temperatures in Ouargla, Algeria’s southern city in the Sahara desert, are soaring to nearly 120 degrees Fahrenheit this week.

THE TOP FIVE

1. U.S. power sector emissions rose by 4% last year

Emissions from the United States’ electrical sector spiked 4% last year as demand for power drove up generation from coal. That’s according to the latest annual assessment published Tuesday morning by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The report, which has tracked annual emissions data from all power sources since 2010, found that U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions increased by 2%, or about 115 million metric tons, in 2025. But the power sector specifically saw a surge of 4%, or 58 million metric tons, due to a spike in fossil fuel use. Coal-fired generation rose by 13%, even as natural gas-fired power fell 4%. Renewables helped avoid more coal use. While wind generation increased 3%, solar skyrocketed by 34%. Generation from all other sources — including nuclear and the category of “other renewables” that includes hydropower and geothermal — were essentially flat last year.

The coal surge isn’t unique to the U.S., as my colleague Matthew Zeitlin wrote last year. Worldwide, rising demand for electricity and shrinking supply of natural gas coming through the Strait of Hormuz made for a good year for coal.

2. Sustainability software company Watershed unveils framework for calculating data center emissions

Watershed, the software platform focused on corporate sustainability, just published what it called its first comprehensive open framework for estimating the greenhouse gas emissions from companies’ use of AI programs. The framework has three elements: A comprehensive system that includes all phases of a data center’s use, from model training to inference to hardware production; a function unit of kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per million tokens; and a three-tier calculation approach “that aligns with companies’ data quality.”

In a statement to my colleague Emily Pontecorvo, Watershed’s science chief John Bistline said he had “heard from companies that they’re already being asked about AI emissions from investors, from auditors, from regulators, and right now most of them are guessing. We wanted to give them something that was more defensible.”

3. Oil prices surge as Trump weighs bombing Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain

Oil prices spiked again Tuesday after President Donald Trump publicly weighed taking “a nice big fat shot” at Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, where Israeli intelligence suggests the Islamic Republic moved its uranium-enriching centrifuges last fall. Brent crude, the main European benchmark for the price per barrel of oil, rose nearly 3% to over $91. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. price signal, saw a 3% hike to just nearly $85. Murban crude — out of the United Arab Emirates, therefore the most sensitive to Persian Gulf disruptions — soared nearly 5% to just under $86 per barrel.

Shakeups among smaller producers, meanwhile, appeared to cancel out each other’s effects on the market. The shot: Kazakhstan, which falls just outside the top 10 oil-producing nations, is halting crude shipments to the Russia ports it relied on to get its hydrocarbons to market now that Ukraine is consistently attacking the Kremlin’s energy infrastructure, according to the Financial Times. The chaser: Norway’s oil output just beat forecasts, per Oil Price.

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4. EPA chief Lee Zeldin promises to fulfill the coal industry’s ‘wish list’

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. Kevin Lamarque-Pool/Getty Images

Unlike the last man Trump put in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency during his first term in office, Lee Zeldin hadn’t formally worked for the coal industry before serving in government. But the EPA administrator sure made it sound like the industry’s executives are high-priority constituents. At a National Coal Council event in Washington, D.C.’s Willard Hotel that E&E News covered, Zeldin said “many of the items that were on your wish list are now done.” In the coming months, he added, the agency would get to “the remainder of those items,” but said he wouldn’t “prejudge” any rulemaking outcomes. “Between now and your next meeting, I’m excited to be able to share with great optimism, hope, and enthusiasm that you all, again, not prejudging the outcome of any rulemaking, we’ll have a lot to celebrate the next time you all get together again in January,” Zeldin said. One thing the EPA can’t do: Keep the coal plants the Trump administration wants open actually running. As Matthew wrote last year, the big problem with aging coal stations is that they keep breaking down.

5. Global nuclear deals doubled in the first half of 2026 to $7 billion

Mergers and acquisitions within the global nuclear industry totaled more than $7 billion in value in the first half of 2026, doubling that same figure from a year earlier. That’s according to new data the law firm White & Case LLP shared Tuesday with World Nuclear News. The number of individual deals increased 10%, from 40 to 44. “At the current pace of dealmaking activity, 2026 is set to surpass all years aside from 2024 when a record $29 billion of M&A activity was registered,” the law firm said. More proof that the nuclear dealmaking boom, as Heatmap’s Katie Brigham wrote last year, “is real.”

THE KICKER

It’s not just automobiles going hybrid-electric. The startup Electra, which has promised to build a nine-passenger hybrid-electric plane that can take off in as little as 150 feet, is now pumping $850 million into its first aircraft factory in Ohio. The plant, announced Tuesday, will build up to 800 aircraft per year at full capacity. But as Electrek put it, “that’s a big commitment for a plane that hasn’t flown yet.”