The International Energy Agency (IEA) published a report on Friday that found coal use surging around the world, with the United States and India leading the pack in 2021 at 15 percent and 14 percent growth in coal consumption, respectively.
The IEA anticipated India’s coal use would grow fastest during the coming year at seven percent, followed by the European Union at six percent. These figures were all expressed as percentage increases over current consumption, so the IEA credited China with relatively small percentage increases because it already uses titanic amounts of coal — accounting for over half of the world’s entire coal consumption, in fact.
The IEA report predicted global coal-fired power generation will “rise to a new record of around 10.3 terawatt-hours this year, while coal production is forecast to rise by 5.4% to around 8.3 billion tons, also an all-time high.”
The authors anticipated relatively “marginal” increases in 2022 after the big surge of 2021, which they saw as a consequence of rising natural gas prices making coal look more attractive, coupled with higher post-pandemic energy demands and “continued robust demand in emerging Asian economies.”
“This means coal will continue to be the global energy system’s largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions by far,” the IEA, which is committed to switching the world’s power grids to cleaner renewable energy sources, noted dourly.
The Times of India (TOI) on Friday painted India as the paramount example of a fast-growing Asian economy hungry for reliable and affordable energy, citing industry reports of a 10.6-percent increase in demand for electricity in the first eight months of the current fiscal year, which began in April 2022.
“Most of this demand was met by coal-fired power plants, pushing their run rate to over 58% but stretching the coal transport infrastructure,” TOI reported, defensively noting that the United States saw an even greater increase in coal demand last year, while the European Union was comparable. Taken on its own, Germany notched in at 19 percent increase in coal consumption.
“Only a few countries recorded declines last year, with South Africa posting the largest fall at 5%,” TOI noted.
The IEA, an energy forum dating back to the 1973 oil crisis that currently has 31 member nations, studiously avoided discussing the possibility that both emerging and established economies might be losing faith in “green energy” as too expensive and unreliable to meet their industrial needs.
Instead of considering the idea that Europe, for example, is panicking and turning back to coal as life-threatening winter temperatures settle in, while countries like India and China simply will not compromise their industrial goals to accept lower energy inputs, the IEA predicted the current boom in demand would level out by 2025 and coal use would decline sharply thereafter.
The IEA report noted China’s record-setting coal use but argued its percentage growth in coal consumption over the past few years largely parallels the rest of the world, albeit with much larger tonnages. The executive summary of the report suggested China would have used even more coal if energy demand had not been suppressed by the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, which raises the unaddressed question of what China’s carbon footprint will look like when the effects of its now-relaxed lockdown policies have completely faded.
“In China, which accounts for 53% of global coal consumption, prolonged and stringent [Chinese coronavirus] lockdowns have weighed heavily on economic activity, undermining coal demand. At the same time, droughts and heat waves in China this summer accelerated coal burning to meet a surge in power demand for air conditioning,” the report remarked.
The full report said China’s “influence on the coal market is unparalleled by any other country and in any other fuel.”
“Developments in China may well have the largest impact on the outlook for global coal demand, since China accounts for more than half of it,” the report said, qualifying this judgment by predicting China’s coal use will be largely flat for the next few years after spiking by 4.6 percent in 2021, while India’s coal use is still growing at six percent per year. On the other hand, the report noted China’s electricity demand is still rising by four percent per year, so there will be considerable pressure on China’s energy infrastructure to come up with more electricity at low prices. China loudly stated when it increased coal production and stockpiles last summer that it will not tolerate continued energy shortages and blackouts.
“The world is close to a peak in fossil fuel use, with coal set to be the first to decline, but we are not there yet. Coal demand is stubborn and will likely reach an all-time high this year, pushing up global emissions,” said IEA Director of Energy Markets and Security Keisuke Sadamori.
“At the same time, there are many signs that today’s crisis is accelerating the deployment of renewables, energy efficiency and heat pumps – and this will moderate coal demand in the coming years. Government policies will be key to ensuring a secure and sustainable path forward,” Sadamori continued.
The IEA said it saw “no sign of surging investment in export-driven coal projects” among top three coal producers China, India, and Indonesia, which ostensibly “reflects caution among investors and mining companies about the medium- and longer-term prospects for coal.”
China, however, has been making some prominent investments in coal production and distribution, notably including a new 145-mile railroad to haul coal from Mongolia. Over the past few years, China has added more coal-fired power plants than the rest of the world combined. In July, Greenpeace complained that approvals for new coal power plants are still increasing in China, despite Beijing’s rhetoric about seeking carbon neutrality.
In a similar spirit, the report predicted “emerging and developing economies in Asia are set to increase coal use to help power their economic growth” at the same time as they “add more renewables.”
Renewables do not cancel the emissions from carbon-generating power plants, so adding both is not moving toward the goals set by the climate change movement – unless one makes the rosy assumption that developing nations will fall in love with green energy in the near future and turn away from the coal and gas power that is currently fueling their industrial growth.
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