China and India drive coal to record highs

By Craig Rucker

Reports of the death of coal are, to quote Mark Twain, “greatly exaggerated.”

In fact, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reveals that coal is having its best year ever, propelled by insatiable demand from China and India.

Read the IEA’s full “Coal 2021” report at CFACT.org.

Here are a few eye-opening takeaways:

• The price of coal more than doubled, hitting an all-time high of $298 this fall, up from $81 last year
• “Coal is the largest source of electricity generation”
• Global coal power is “on course to increase by 9% to 10,350 terawatt-hours (TWh) – a new all-time high”
• Coal is the “second largest source of primary energy”
• China, which both produces and imports the most coal, increased its coal use another 9%
• Chinese power accounts for “one-third of global coal consumption”
• Chinese “overall coal use is more than half of the global total”
• India, the number two coal user, increased coal 12%
• “Global coal consumption is not on the Net Zero trajectory”

Here is coal use by region with the IEA’s projections out to 2024:

China and India value coal so highly that they worked together to scuttle tough anti-coal language at COP 26, the UN climate conference in Glasgow, prompting COP President Alok Sharma, MP, to issue a tear-filled apology.

While China and India ramp up their economies, the Biden Administration is strangling American energy production, crippling decades of work toward energy independence, and causing severe inflationary pressure.

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (if that’s your thing) count for nothing with nations such as China and India eager to supply the goods we no longer manufacture… and expand their fossil fuel energy use as fast as their economies will allow.

Author

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president.

From cfact.org