Coal use likely to set new 8 billion ton record this year (and next year too)
How’s that transition going then?
The IEA reports that the stranded dead asset is probably about to hit an all time record high:
For 2022 as a whole, we expect global coal demand to increase by 0.7% from 2021 to about 8 billion tonnes. This would match its all-time peak reached in 2013…
Worldwide coal consumption in 2021 rebounded by 5.8% to 7 947 million tonnes (Mt), according to our data, as the global economy recovered from the initial shock of the Covid pandemic and higher natural gas prices drove a shift towards coal-fired power generation.
Current coal price tonight: $407.90. Also almost a record. So we have highest volume at the highest price, and people want you to believe that no one wants coal.
China burns 53% of the world’s coal:
Coal demand in China, the world’s largest consumer by far, increased by 4.6%, or 185 Mt, in 2021, reaching an all-time high of 4 230 Mt.
India becomes the second country in the world to join the billion-ton-coal-club:
India consumed 1 053 Mt of coal in 2021, a new all-time high and the largest amount consumed in a single year by any country other than China.
One country in particular, isn’t trying to reduce coal by 2030:
So how high was that 2013 peak record? Strangely, the IEA doesn’t tell us, perhaps because it was just 8,002 Mt — which they thought then was a “historic high”. They even said that “global coal consumption will not return to its 2018 levels”.
Curiously, if we take the 2021 figure of 7,947 Mt and add their estimated 0.7% increase we get 8,002.6 Mt. What are the odds? But even if coal use doesn’t set a new record this year, it almost certainly will next year.
In 2020 coal use fell to 7.2b tons.
Peak coal again?