Overview
Policy decisions made to ensure the electric grid can supply surging demand from artificial intelligence and data centers have interrupted a decade of progress toward cleaner air in parts of the United States. In metro St. Louis, where residents already experience some of the worst air quality among U.S. metro areas, the consequences are acute: regulatory reversals and emergency orders have kept high-emitting coal plants online and postponed emission reductions that previously appeared likely to be imposed.
From hope to setback
Barbara Johnson, a long-time community organizer in North St. Louis, had held hope that new federal soot standards adopted in 2024 under the prior administration would translate into tangible air-quality improvements for her neighborhood. Those standards were due to take effect in 2027 and would have demanded deep reductions in fine particulate emissions, forcing some sources to upgrade controls or shutter operations.
Johnson, 75, who has campaigned on the issue for decades, said the recent reversal feels like a fresh step backward after incremental gains. "You take two steps forward and four steps back," she said. "I am used to that backwards trend but how many generations will it take to make those positive changes stick?"
Federal policy and the role of AI demand
The Trump administration issued an executive order titled "Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry," citing coal-fired generation as important to meeting a projected rise in U.S. electricity demand driven by the expansion of artificial intelligence data processing centers. To that end, the administration has taken multiple actions to slow retirements and reduce the regulatory burden on coal plants, including funding to keep older facilities operational, orders to delay planned retirements, and rollbacks of rules on mercury and other emissions that would otherwise compel investment in controls.
In defending those moves, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in an emailed statement that "Ensuring affordable baseload power, including coal, is essential for keeping the lights on and heating American homes," and that the agency remains "committed to ensuring clean air for all Americans regardless of race, gender, creed, or background."
Federal energy estimates cited by officials project that AI and data-center growth will create 50 gigawatts of new electricity demand by 2030, which is a sizable addition relative to the roughly 1,300 gigawatts of capacity produced by U.S. power plants in 2025. That projected demand rise has been a primary justification for emergency measures intended to keep existing plants available to serve the grid.
Coal plants, retirements, and a shifting trajectory
Between 2015 and the most recent federal data examined, the number of U.S. coal-fired units contributing to the grid fell sharply from nearly 400 to about 200. That pace of decline, however, has slowed. In 2015, operators retired 94 plants producing about 15 gigawatts. By 2025, only four plants totaling 2.6 gigawatts were retired, as emergency actions kept plants online to meet immediate demand needs, according to Energy Information Administration data.
These developments have raised alarm among community groups, health advocates, and environmental organizations interviewed for this report, all of whom identified the AI-driven expansion and the policy responses to it as the most significant near-term threat to U.S. air quality, particularly where coal remains an available source of dispatchable power.
St. Louis and the Labadie Energy Center
St. Louis has emerged as a focal point of concern. Residents of the metro area experienced "good" air by the EPA Air Quality Index for only about one-third of days last year, ranking the metro area 475th out of 501 U.S. metro regions on that measure. The Labadie Energy Center, a large coal-fired facility located roughly 40 miles west of the city, is identified in government data and scientific studies as a significant contributor to regional pollution.
EPA data show that Labadie produces the highest combined total of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides among U.S. coal plants, and its soot emission rate is two to three times that of nearly every other coal plant in the country. Those emissions are not only a local nuisance but have measurable economic and health consequences for residents in the surrounding region.
Health and economic burden quantified
A Reuters analysis using the EPA’s Co-Benefits Risk Assessment tool found that the pollution from labadie and similar sources drives an estimated economic burden nationally of up to $5.5 billion per year, with approximately $820 million of those costs falling on St. Louis area residents. The COBRA model estimates health-related costs such as emergency room visits and aggregates what populations are collectively willing to pay for reductions in premature mortality risk associated with cleaner air.
External scientific reviewers who examined the analysis agreed with the figures produced by the COBRA tool. Ameren Corp, which owns the Labadie plant, did not contest the Reuters analysis of EPA data and noted that the plant operates within current federal pollution limits.
Regulatory changes and studies
Researchers at the University of Washington published a study last year that identified St. Louis as the city most affected by delays to tighter soot standards. Under the Biden administration’s regulation, Labadie would have been required to cut its soot emissions by more than half in order to remain operational. The EPA previously estimated that the soot limits proposed under the earlier rule would yield net public health benefits of up to $3 billion nationwide by 2037.
Since those rules were set to take effect, the EPA under the current administration has reversed course, saying that prior estimates overstated benefits and that existing standards provide "an ample margin of safety to protect public health." The EPA also said it is seeking updates to its cost-benefit modeling tools.
Local activists and community response
Community leaders and local environmental groups see the regulatory shift as a reversal that leaves certain neighborhoods disproportionately exposed. Darnell Tingle, director of United Congregations of Metro-East, described the region as a "sacrifice zone" and said activists are working to prepare for data-center growth and to mitigate harms to their communities.
Patricia Schuba, who runs a local environmental monitoring group focused on Labadie and three other area coal plants, emphasized the mismatch between the proclaimed benefits of cheaper electricity and the rising healthcare costs borne by local residents. She noted that particulate soot levels in predominantly Black neighborhoods of North St. Louis regularly exceed federal safety guidelines and that these particles are small enough to penetrate lungs and, in some evidence, the brain.
Environmental justice dimensions
Demographic disparities referenced by advocates underscore the environmental justice implications: studies cited in the reporting indicate that a large share of African Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, and that soot pollution from power plants is associated with higher mortality rates among African Americans compared with national averages. Those disparities inform activists’ broader critique that regulatory changes place larger burdens on communities that already face disproportionate environmental health risks.
Ameren’s position and plant operations
Ameren has described Labadie as operating within federal limits and has said the plant will remain a key source of energy as AI-driven demand for electricity outpaces the deployment of cleaner capacity. In a statement, Craig Giesman, Ameren’s director of environmental services, observed that the company’s employees and their families are local and said Ameren is focused on operating responsibly, protecting public health, and providing reliable energy when it is most needed.
Ameren has also noted that it has signed contracts to serve additional peak demand requests, citing 2.3 gigawatts of potential peak demand from data centers. The company said more requests are arriving. One particularly large project in the pipeline near St. Louis is a proposed 1,000-acre data center development by Amazon Web Services in Montgomery County that would be powered by Ameren. Amazon declined to comment for this reporting.
Plant upgrades and compliance history
About a decade ago, to comply with Obama-era soot standards, Ameren installed advanced pollution controls on two of Labadie’s four coal boilers. Under the Biden-era soot limits that were scheduled to take effect in 2027, at a minimum, the older controls on the remaining boilers would have required retrofitting. Ameren sought an exemption in a March 2025 letter to the EPA and has not provided public figures on the cost of additional upgrades.
Data centers and the responsibility for generation choices
Data-center developers are moving ahead with projects in the St. Louis region, adding to regional electricity needs. The Data Center Coalition, a trade group for the industry, said its members rank among the top purchasers of clean energy and that utilities, regulators, and grid operators are ultimately responsible for the generation mix serving large customers. Lucas Fykes, Senior Director of Energy Policy and Regulatory Counsel at the coalition, said resource planning and generation procurement decisions are made by those entities, rather than by the data centers themselves.
Political and electoral considerations
The expansion of data centers and the controversies that accompany them have also become politically salient. A coalition that includes farmers, environmentalists, and homeowners has resisted data-center builds, citing concerns from higher electricity bills to strains on water supplies. Those stakes have been identified as a potential political liability for Republicans heading into the November midterm elections.
What the reversal means locally
For residents of North St. Louis and surrounding communities, the regulatory rollback means a deferred horizon for cleaner air and the prospect that a major regional polluter will continue emitting at high rates for years to come. Local activists who had expected the 2027 standards to force significant reductions now confront a policy environment where those limits have been rescinded.
Community advocates and public-health analysts have quantified both the direct health harms and the economic costs to households, underscoring that decisions about grid reliability and power sourcing carry consequences that extend beyond energy markets into public health and fiscal burdens borne by specific regions.
Broader implications
The tension highlighted by the St. Louis example points to a broader policy tradeoff: the need to supply growing, concentrated loads for AI and data processing while managing emissions and protecting vulnerable communities. Until sufficient cleaner capacity is deployed, utilities and policymakers continue to confront difficult choices about whether to rely on existing fossil-fired plants to ensure reliability.
Where regulatory relief keeps older plants online, the immediate security of grid operations may be maintained at the cost of localized air quality and the distribution of health risks. Activists argue that the long-term public-health and economic costs to affected regions are not being fully addressed in the current policy response.
Conclusion
The interplay between data-center growth and energy policy has reshaped a trajectory that once appeared to be steering older, dirtier generation toward retirement. For neighborhoods near Labadie and similar facilities, the result is a renewed exposure to soot and associated health risks. As the nation adjusts its energy strategy to accommodate new loads from AI, the distributional consequences of those choices remain contested, with local communities and public-health advocates warning of ongoing harms while utilities and federal agencies emphasize grid reliability and operational constraints.