New EPA data shows that greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants plummeted 38 percent from 2005 to 2020, even more rapidly than the goals in the Obama-era Clean Power Plan and achieved more than a decade early.
Driving the decline was a shift away from the burning of coal, driven by technological advances and cheaper prices for natural gas, wind, and solar power, as well as by environmental rules that forced coal power plants to pay for more pollution controls.