The UK celebrated Oct. 1 as the first day in nearly 150 years that its power plants did not burn a single lump of coal to generate electricity. The moment was hailed by politicians as a sign of progress against fossil fuels.
It was also completely irrelevant. The same day that the UK went without coal-fired electricity, the world burned roughly 24 million tonnes of coal. Let me put the statistics into perspective: The world that day consumed nearly five times more coal than the UK used during the whole of last year. Yes, five times more in one day than in a year.
Coal demand set a record high last year, according to an International Energy Agency (IEA) annual report published on Wednesday. Considering that the commodity is the most important contributor to global warming, its consumption trends matter enormously for the fight against climate change. The report makes for depressing reading: The planet is losing to our unquenchable demand for king coal. Forget all of the slogans about consigning coal to history. We are on a path to consigning the planet to history.
Illustration: Mountain People
As the IEA puts it: “Coal is often considered a fuel of the past, but global consumption of it has doubled in the past three decades.”
Worse, not only has usage grown a lot — particularly in China and India — but demand is to keep rising for the foreseeable future.
The IEA estimates that global coal demand surged to an all-time high of 8,771 million tonnes this year, up 1 percent from last year, as electricity demand rose faster than expected. That should not be a surprise: The energy transition requires electrifying everything. Renewables are doing some of that job, but coal remains the go-to fuel to power the energy transition.
REVISIONS
Worse, the IEA revised higher its historical data, so the increase comes from a significantly higher baseline than before. The world is consuming a lot more coal than we thought — and therefore, it is polluting the atmosphere a lot more than we thought, too. The IEA initially estimated consumption last year at 8,563 million tonnes, but now pegs it at 8,687 million. The difference equals roughly the annual demand of Japan, the world’s fourth-biggest coal consumer.
The IEA is trying to paint an optimistic outlook about the future. However, the numbers say otherwise. In rose-tinted prose, the agency says that global coal demand could “plateau” over the next three years. Well, that is if you do not mind that the plateau is uphill rather than fairly level. In reality, the IEA forecasts fresh records for coal demand next year, in 2026 and again in 2027. True, the annual increase for each of the next few years is small. However, the trend is higher. The electricity sector has been the main driver, with power generation from burning the fossil fuel set to reach an all-time high of 10,700 terawatt-hours this year.
The higher-for-longer matters because it represents a U-turn for the IEA. Last year, the agency said that the deployment of solar panels, wind turbines and other sources of green energy was “likely to push global coal consumption on a downward trajectory,” adding: “This would imply that coal is likely to peak in 2023.”
Not anymore.
The extra consumption is truly shocking. Let us compare the forecast for 2026 published last year (at 8,344 million tonnes) to the one for the same year just published (at 8,847 million). The difference (503 million tonnes) equals the combined annual use of the US and Japan. The IEA has been calling for a peak in coal use, particularly in China, for more than a decade. Considering that record of wrong calls, it would be prudent for the agency to err on the side of caution. Flagging higher demand is not cheerleading fossil-fuel consumption — it is candidly conceding to reality.
CHINA
The biggest problem is China. The country, worshiped by some green enthusiasts thanks to its embrace of electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels, is the world’s biggest polluter. China alone consumes nearly 30 percent more coal than the rest of the world together. That is not ending anytime soon.
The IEA assumes that Chinese coal demand would set an all-time high every year until at least 2027. For Beijing, coal is energy security. It is time to acknowledge that, and to acknowledge that China’s promises to reduce its coal consumption any time soon just do not stand up to scrutiny.
Javier Blas is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy and commodities. He is coauthor of The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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