Global coal demand set to fall as China uses more renewables

CNN: Global coal demand is likely to have peaked this year and could drop by about 2 percent over the next three years as China brings more renewable energy sources online, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said yesterday.
It’s the first time the Paris-based agency has predicted a drop in appetite for the dirty fuel over a three-year period.
Demand is on track to peak at 8.54 billion metric tonnes (9.4 billion tonnes) this year, surpassing the previous record of 8.42 billion metric tonnes hit in 2022, the IEA said in its annual coal market report.
The agency expects demand to start falling in 2024 and to drop by 2.3 percent by the end of 2026. Keisuke Sadamori, the IEA’s director of energy markets and security, said the forecast showed that “a turning point for coal is clearly on the horizon”.
“We have seen declines in global coal demand a few times but they were brief and caused by extraordinary events such as the collapse of the Soviet Union or the Covid-19 crisis,” he said in a press release. “This time appears different, as the decline is more structural, driven by the formidable and sustained expansion of clean energy technologies.”
More than half of the renewable energy capacity coming online in the next three years will be in China, the IEA said. The country currently accounts for over half of global demand for coal, according to the agency.

A new global climate deal, agreed Wednesday at the COP28 summit, makes an unprecedented call for countries to transition away from fossil fuels but uses vague language that could allow some governments to take minimal action. The agreement falls short of requiring the world to “phase out” oil, coal and natural gas — something more than 100 countries and many climate groups had been calling for.