Want to know something terrifying? We can’t seem to quit the one thing dragging us towards a climate apocalypse. A report by Global Energy Monitor found that global coal capacity grew by 2% last year. The West is trying to phase out this dirty and toxic energy source, but economic conditions are significantly slowing this down, meaning only 21 GW of coal power was retired last year. Meanwhile, 69.5 GW of brand-new coal power plants came online, two-thirds of which were in China and the rest in Asia, the Indo-Pacific and Africa. This meant the global coal capacity grew by a massive 48.5 GW in 2023, the greatest increase since 2016! Why is this a problem? Well, not only is coal power by far the most deadly power source we have, being over 1,000 times more deadly per unit of energy than nuclear power, but it is also the leading contributor to our rapid slide toward climate and environmental Armageddon. Let me explain.
Let’s delve into the facts. Coal power is the most polluting form of energy, emitting a staggering 950 g of carbon dioxide per kWh of energy. To put this into perspective, solar and wind energy hovers around 5g — 10g per kWh, and natural gas emits about 350g per kWh. Despite coal accounting for only 36% of the global energy mix, it’s responsible for a staggering 73% of the energy sector’s carbon emissions. This is why coal is a major culprit in climate change.
In fact, some have argued (and I agree with them) that coal is the cause of our upcoming climate doom. A study from researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology and Lund University, Sweden, looked at current global carbon emissions and countries’ plans and projects to reduce these emissions over the next few decades to try and calculate what level of global warming we are likely to see. Sadly, they found that we are far from doing enough to meet our climate targets and, instead, are on course to fly right past them to 3 degrees Celsius of warming. That is enough to cause global catastrophic levels of environmental destruction. But they also found that we could avoid this apocalyptic future and meet our climate targets by doing just one thing: phasing out coal power.
This study is far from unsupported. The UN recently warned that global coal capacity needs to be reduced by 6% per year to avoid a worldwide climate emergency. The Global Energy Monitor report also agreed with these researchers, pointing out that coal plants need to be shut down far faster. In particular, they highlight how China must adopt stricter controls on its coal capacity expansion, as they are by far the worst coal offender. In fact, an analyst from Global Energy Monitor has said that coal phase-out is imperative “Otherwise, we can forget about meeting our goals in the Paris Agreement and reaping the benefits that a swift transition to clean energy will bring.”
This is where we can give a sense of scale to how vast the coal problem is. The scientific consensus is that to meet our climate targets, coal needs to be fully phased out by 2040. This requires 126 GW of coal plants to be phased out each year; that’s the equivalent of two plants being decommissioned per week, or six times the current coal plant shutdown rate, all without any new plants being built between now and 2040. But, instead, last year, a brand-spanking new coal plant came online on average every week!
So the question has to be asked: Why are we, and in particular China, building so many coal plants rather than renewables when we know coal is the thing killing the planet?
Well, China is actually expanding renewables faster than anyone else on the planet. However, they need to do a better job adapting their energy grid to this new form of energy. This means the more renewables they build, the more susceptible they are to blackouts. To solve this, they also need to rapidly deploy a cheap and independent (i.e. no need to import fuels) on-tap form of energy to fill in the gaps. Well, coal power is one of the most affordable and quickest to deploy fossil fuels, and China has vast swathes of coal reserves, so it is an ideal choice for them.
But there’s a way out of this. If China redirected its focus from coal to maximizing its renewable fleet by updating its energy grid to be decentralized, intelligently managed, and with properly integrated energy storage, it could tackle this issue. These technologies are not just a distant dream; they exist and are now commercially viable. The same applies to us in the West; if we adopt these measures, we could accelerate the phase-out of coal and alleviate this pressing problem. So, why aren’t we taking these steps? I wish I knew.
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Sources: IEA, Global Energy Monitor, The Guardian, Will Lockett, VC, PV Mag, IEA, UN, Sustainability By Numbers