U.S Electric Utility Coal Consumption Trends in Red States and Blue States

The EIA provides annual data for U.S states listing their electric utility’s coal consumption. I fed these data to Grok and told Grok to make this graph. States such as California and New York are assigned to Blue States and states such as Texas and Oklahoma are assigned to Red States.

This graph teaches us several interesting facts. Back in 1990, there was a large Red State coal differential. This coal differential grew until roughly 2008. By 2024, the coal consumption gap between these two sets of states has sharply narrowed. This should translate into PM2.5 air pollution convergence.

Grok reports the following facts

• Overall decline (1990-2024):

  • Red states: 47.0% decline (from 530.7 million short tons in 1990 to 281.2 million in 2024).

  • Blue states: 65.1% decline (from 242.4 million short tons in 1990 to 84.6 million in 2024).

• Average annual percentage change (1990-2024):

  • Red states: -1.6% per year.

  • Blue states: -2.6% per year.

• Recent decline (2015-2024, aligning with the query’s time frame):

  • Red states: 44.8% decline (from 509.4 million short tons in 2015 to 281.2 million in 2024).

  • Blue states: 60.6% decline (from 214.6 million short tons in 2015 to 84.6 million in 2024).

The coal to natural gas transition has been fueled by the rise of fracking.

I am not convinced that I see a Presidential Cycle effect in these graphs. During these years, we experienced several transitions from Republican (Bush 1) to Democrat (Clinton) to Republican (Bush 2) to Democrat (Obama) to Republican (Trump) to Democrat (Biden). While many point to the power of the Federal Government and regulation as playing a central role in determining the path of emissions, I am not seeing definitive political business cycles here. While this is a just a simple graph, I do not see Red State coal consumption rising when Republicans are President. Many of my students often advance such a “domestic pollution havens” hypothesis. At least these time series suggest that this concern is misplaced.

My point? I posit that air pollution progress trends under Trump 2 will not reverse. Now, of course, this doesn’t answer the question of what would be the nation’s PM2.5 trend if Democrats always serve as President.

UPDATE

In my first draft, I didn’t discuss my own past relevant research.

In our paper, we argue that Blue States and Blue Cities have chosen not to build housing (think of San Francisco and Berkeley) and this leads to a deflection effect such that more people move to a Texas or a Nevada where they consume more energy because these places are cheaper, more sprawled and hotter in summer.

Glaeser, Edward L., and Matthew E. Kahn. "The greenness of cities: Carbon dioxide emissions and urban development." Journal of urban economics 67, no. 3 (2010): 404-418.

So, I recalculated the picture above.

I partition states into Red and Blue based on Presidential Voting in the year 2000 election. Note that the units change here. I calculate total Red State and Blue State electric utility coal consumption in each year and then I divide this by total population in these two sets. So, the 1997 Red data point = (Total Red State Electric Utility Coal Consumption in 1997)/(Total population in Red States in 1997). I see enormous Red State progress in the last 10 years. This is unlikely to be caused by regulation! The rise of Fracking caused this composition shift and this clear convergence between Red and Blue States.