“This year looks set to see the largest fall in electricity production from coal on record, according to a new report.
“The reduction is estimated to be more than the power generated from coal in Germany, Spain and the UK combined.
“It is projected to drop by 3% - which is a fall of 300 terawatt hours”.

In particular, there were record reductions in the US, EU, and South Korea.

It’s confusing in China, because they are still building new coal plants and yet these are being used less than ever—a “utilization rate” of only 49%.

Here’s a graphic showing the world’s annual changes in coal use:

You can see the hit that happened after the 2008 financial crisis, and also another one back in 2015.

Just be careful, the bars show the change with respect to the previous year. To get back to coal’s electricity production in 1986—for example—you’d need to have the summed height of orange bars going down equal to the summed height of the purple bars going up. Clearly, we’re still quite far off.

And because this kind of drop has happened three times in the past 11 years, it would be premature to jump for joy.

The Australian government is certainly betting on coal requirements increasing again. Otherwise, why would it be building a new coal mine?

[By the way, here’s the report the articles above were based on.]

[Coal mine photo credit: Dominik Vanyi/Unsplash]