ISLAMABAD: The burning of coal for electricity, steel, cement and other uses went up in 2022, although the world promises to phase down the fuel that’s the huge source of planet-warming gases in the atmosphere, a report found Wednesday.
The coal fleet grew by 19.5 gigawatts the previous year, enough to light up around 15 million homes, with nearly all the latest coal-commissioned projects in China, according to the report by Global Energy Monitor, an organization that tracks the variety of energy projects around the world.
That one percent raise comes at a time when the globe needs to retire its coal fleet four and a half times faster to meet climate aims, the report said.
In 2021, countries around the globe promised to phase down the use of coal to help achieve the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“The more fresh coal projects come online, the steeper the cuts and commitments need to be in the future,” said lead author of the report and the project manager for GEM’s Global Coal Plant Tracker, Flora Champenois.
Latest coal plants were added in 14 countries
The latest coal plants were added in 14 countries, and eight countries announced coal projects. India, China, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, and Turkiye were the only countries that added the latest coal plants and announced fresh projects. China accounted for 92% of all coal project announcements.
China added 26.8 gigawatts, and India added about 3.5 gigawatts of the latest coal power capacity to their electricity grids. China approved nearly 100 gigawatts of new coal power projects, with construction likely to begin this year.
But “the long term trajectory is still toward clean energy,” Shantanu Srivastava said, the energy analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis based in New Delhi. Shantanu said the pandemic and the war in Ukraine temporarily drove some countries toward fossil fuels.
In Europe, the Russian invasion of Ukraine meant a scramble for alternative energy sources, and droughts stifled hydropower; the continent saw a minor increase in coal use. Others went the other way. There were important t shutdowns in the US, where 13.5 gigawatts of coal power were retired. It’s one of 17 countries closed up plants in the previous year.
With nearly 2,500 plants around the globe, coal accounts for about a third of the total amount of energy installation internationally. Other fossil fuels, nuclear energy and renewable energy make up the rest.
To meet climate aims set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, coal plants in rich nations must need be retired by 2030, and coal plants in developing nations need to be shut down by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency. That means around 117 gigawatts of coal need to be retired yearly, but only 26 gigawatts were retired in 2022.
Champenois said that “At this rate, the transition away from existing and new coal is not happening fast enough to avoid climate chaos,
Srivastava added that it’s significant to make sure the millions employed in the coal and other dirty industries aren’t left behind when transitioning to clean energy, although that gets difficult the more coal projects get locked in.
“Every day, we delay the transition to clean energy,” said Srivastava, “it not only makes it harder to achieve climate goals, but it makes the transition more expensive.”
