We’re losing the battle to dethrone King Coal

The good news is that the energy transition is well underway. We are electrifying almost everything that was powered by greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuels.
The bad news is that the transition to electricity is largely driven by coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels and the biggest contributor to climate change.
A quarter of a century after humanity first got serious about global warming at the time of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the world this year will burn a record 8.74 billion metric tonnes of coal, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA).
The consensus of climate change experts is that meaningful progress in fighting global warming requires that coal consumption drop at least to 2000 levels by 2030.
But that’s unlikely to happen until 2050 at the earliest, the IEA’s projections show.
From a Canadian perspective, it can seem as if the world has been putting coal in its place. Canadian coal consumption dropped by about 72 per cent between 2003 and 2023.
Alberta closed the last of its coal-fired power plants in June.
Alberta is a jurisdiction of rapid population and economic growth, and it has ample coal reserves, besides. Those same economic conditions keep heavy coal users, notably in Asia Pacific, from abandoning coal.
But if Alberta can transition away from coal power, as Ontario and Manitoba have also done, there’s reason to believe other jurisdictions can do the same.
And many have. 
The U.K. has cut its coal consumption in power generation to less than four per cent from 36 per cent in just six years.
Other leaders in cutting coal power include Greece, Portugal, Chile and Denmark.
But in the world’s two most populous countries, coal accounts for about 60 per cent of electricity production in China and almost 75 per cent in India.
The U.S. still relies on coal for about 16 per cent of its electricity generation. The number for Canada is about five per cent.
Overall, coal-burning power plants still provide about one-third of the world’s electricity.
Climate change is universal, of course. So, the burning of coal anywhere is a problem everywhere.
Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said in the agency’s latest annual report that “In energy history, we’ve witnessed the Age of Coal and the Age of Oil. We’re now moving at speed into the Age of Electricity.”
In fact, we are still mired in the Age of Coal.
Elsewhere in its report, issued in October, the IEA forecasts that today’s record coal consumption will rise by a further six per cent by 2030 from last year’s level.
Far from peaking, as too many policymakers imagine that it has, coal demand will increase by decade’s end by an amount roughly equal to the annual coal consumption of Japan, the world’s fourth-largest coal consumer.
The reasons are soaring global power demand and certain advantages of coal over other energy sources.
Increased power demand is coming from everywhere.
It is rising in developing world regions where growing affluence translates into higher demand for electric cars and appliances that run on electricity.
Increased power is needed for household heat pumps, proliferating data centres and artificial intelligence applications, and desalination plants to ease shortages of fresh water.
Additional power is needed for air conditioning, no longer a luxury in a world increasingly stricken by debilitating heat waves caused by climate change.
King Coal also still reigns because it is one of the fastest ways to increase power supply.
The new coal-fired power plants that China and India are still building can take under two years to bring online.
By contrast, a hydroelectric or nuclear power station can take up to two decades to plan and build.
And power from burning coal doesn’t depend on the weather, as solar, wind and hydroelectric power production do.
In recent years, declining water runoff caused by climate change has constrained the capacity of Canada’s hydroelectric stations.
It’s no small irony that the transition to electricity actually sustains coal use.
For instance, China’s world leadership in production of electric vehicles, wind-power equipment and solar panels relies on coal-fired power production. China accounts for 56 per cent of the world’s coal consumption.
Another example is Indonesia, whose production of the nickel essential to electric vehicle batteries has required a doubling of its coal-based power consumption in the past five years.
Finally, the continued coal menace, which is tied to an estimated 800,000 premature deaths worldwide each year, is largely neglected among energy experts, many of whom mistakenly regard coal as a commodity consigned to history.
At energy conferences, “I hear more discussions about banning plastic straws than about coal,” says Bloomberg columnist Javier Blas.
We won’t dethrone King Coal until we at least start talking about it. And celebrate examples like Alberta and the U.K. and withhold unqualified praise of China as an exemplar of green tech.