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Sulfur dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants have fallen faster than coal generation

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Sulfur dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants have fallen faster than coal generation

When I was young, there was this thing called acid rain, produced from the blue smoke from power plants, which was laden with sulfur dioxide.

"Sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions produced in the generation of electricity at power plants in the United States declined by 73% from 2006 to 2015, a much larger reduction than the 32% decrease in coal-fired electricity generation over that period. From 2014 to 2015, the most recent year with complete power plant emissions data, SO2 emissions fell 26%—the largest annual drop in percentage terms in the previous decade. Nearly all electricity-related SO2 emissions are associated with coal-fired generation."

China’s War On Coal Continues — The Country Just Canceled 104 New Coal Plants.

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China’s War On Coal Continues — The Country Just Canceled 104 New Coal Plants.

Because China is such a behemoth, its energy decisions absolutely dwarf anything any other country is doing right now. Case in point: Over the weekend, the Chinese government ordered 13 provinces to cancel 104 coal-fired projects in development, amounting to a whopping 120 gigawatts of capacity in all.

To put that in perspective, the United States has about 305 gigawatts of coal capacity total. The projects that China just halted are equal in size to one-third of the US coal fleet. It’s potentially a very, very big deal for efforts to fight climate change.