A report by Global Energy Monitor on Wednesday found that the burning of coal for electricity, cement, steel and other uses went up in 2022 despite global promises to phase down the fuel that’s the biggest source of planet-warming gases in the atmosphere.
According to the report, the coal fleet grew by 19.5 gigawatts last year, enough to light up around 15 million homes around the world, with nearly all newly commissioned coal projects in China.
Countries around the world promised to phase down the use of coal to help achieve the goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) in 2021. The world needs to retire its coal fleet four and a half times faster to meet this and other climate goals, the report said.
“The more new coal projects come online, the steeper the cuts and commitments need to be in the future,” Flora Champenois, the report’s lead author and the project manager for GEM’s Global Coal Plant Tracker was quoted as saying.
Fourteen countries added new coal plants and eight countries announced new coal projects. China accounted for 92% of all new coal project announcements, and it with India, Indonesia, Turkey and Zimbabwe were the only countries that both added new coal plants and announced new projects.
China added 26.8 gigawatts and India added about 3.5 gigawatts of new coal power capacity to their electricity grids. Also, China gave clearance for about 100 gigawatts of new coal power projects that will likely be constructed this year.
In Europe, the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to a scramble for alternative energy sources while droughts stifled hydropower at the same time. However, the continent only saw a very minor increase in coal use.
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There were significant shutdowns in the U.S. where 13.5 gigawatts of coal power was retired. It’s one of 17 countries that closed up plants in the past year.
With nearly 2,500 plants around the world, coal accounts for about a third of the total amount of energy installation globally. Other fossil fuels, nuclear energy and renewable energy make up the rest.
According to the International Energy Agency, coal plants in rich countries need to be retired by 2030 and coal plants in developing countries need to be shut down by 2040 in order to meet climate goals set in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Only 26 gigawatts was retired in 2022 instead of the 117 gigawatts of coal needs to be retired every year.
“At this rate, the transition away from existing and new coal isn’t happening fast enough to avoid climate chaos,” said Champenois.
Srivastava added that its important to make sure the millions employed in coal and other dirty industries are not left behind when transitioning to clean energy, although that gets more difficult the more coal projects get locked in.
“Every day we delay a transition to clean energy,” Srivastava said, “it not only makes it harder to achieve climate goals but it also makes the transition more expensive.”
Story was adapted from AP.
