Forget solar, wind, hydro, and wave power. The capacity to burn coal for electricity generation rose in 2022 despite global promises to phase out the fuel with a defiant China leading the way, a report Wednesday set out.
The coal fleet grew by 19.5 gigawatts last year, enough to light up around 15 million homes, with nearly all newly commissioned coal projects in China, AP reports citing the Global Energy Monitor, an organization that tracks a variety of energy projects around the globe.
New coal plants were added in 14 countries and eight countries announced new coal projects. China, India, Indonesia, Turkey and Zimbabwe were the only countries that both added new coal plants and announced new projects.
This boom in coal use defies a direct order from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who in 2020 demanded the world must stop building new coal power plants and instead embrace green alternatives in a post-coronavirus reset world.
China accounted for 92 percent of all new coal project announcements, AP records, and has been building capacity for the last decade and longer.
As Breitbart News reported, a joint report by the U.S.-based Global Energy Monitor (GEM) and Helsinki-based Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) in 2021 found China built over three times as much coal-fired electrical power capacity in 2020 as the rest of the world combined.
A bulldozer pushes coal onto a conveyor belt at the Jiangyou Power Station on January 28, 2022 in Mianyang City, Sichuan Province of China. (Liu Zhongjun/China News Service via Getty)
As China, which generates around 30 percent of all global carbon emissions, rushed to embrace even more coal generating systems, in the U.S. the push is going the other way.
There were significant shutdowns in the U.S. where 13.5 gigawatts of coal power was retired under President Joe Biden.
It’s one of 17 countries that closed up plants in the past year.
With nearly 2,500 plants around the world, coal still accounts for about a third of the total amount of energy installation globally. Other fossil fuels, nuclear energy and renewable energy make up the rest.