King Coal Powers On

The IEA keeps predicting a decline in global coal use. But thanks to soaring electricity demand in China and India, coal consumption will hit another new record this year: 8.8 billion tons.

Primary trade flows in the thermal coal market in 2022 and 2023. Note that most of the arrows point to China and India. Source: IEA Coal 2024.

The International Energy Agency has been consistent — and consistently wrong — about global coal demand.

In 2015, the Paris-based agency declared, "The golden age of coal in China seems to be over." That year, it predicted global coal demand would fall to 5.5 billion tons by 2020.

In its 2017 World Energy Outlook, the IEA said, “China remains a towering presence in coal markets, but our projections suggest that coal use peaked in 2013 and is set to decline by almost 15% over the period to 2040.”

In 2020, the agency said, “Looking ahead to 2025, coal demand is expected to flatten.” It continued, “Unless there are unforeseen developments that significantly boost coal demand in emerging Asian economies and China, it is likely that global coal demand peaked in 2013 at just over 8B tons.”

Wrong. Wrong. And wrong again.

Today, the IEA released its Coal 2024 report, which says global coal use will grow by another 1% this year to an all-time high of 8.77 billion tons. The agency also reports that “coal demand, production, coal-fired generation, and international coal trade will surpass records reached in 2023 to set new all-time records.” And here’s the key line: “The power sector has been the main driver of coal demand growth, with electricity generation from coal set to reach an all-time high of 10,700 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2024.”

Why does this matter? Electricity is the form of energy we crave more than any other. Electricity drives modernity and economic growth. And despite coal’s many downsides, countries like China and India are burning staggering amounts of the fuel because it allows them to generate the vast quantities of juice their economies demand at prices their consumers can afford. Burning coal also allows China and India to continue manufacturing, and exporting, a myriad of items — from solar panels and iPhones to clothing and jewelry — that Western consumers can’t imagine living without.

In addition, the continuing surge in coal use is short-circuiting claims that we will see significant cuts in global greenhouse gases. According to the IEA, burning coal accounts for 40% of global energy-related CO₂ emissions. Thus, while battalions of Gucci Gulch lobbyists are angling to preserve the corporate welfare provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act under the guise of climate action — and hare-brained, pink-haired climate activists in Europe are gluing themselves to airport runways and Van Gogh paintings — the IEA report shows that King Coal ain’t dead yet, not by a long shot.

Here’s a sober look at the global coal sector with five charts.