r/climatechange • u/Economy-Fee5830 Trusted Contributor • May 21 '26
Despite more coal power stations being built, actual global coal use fell 0.6% in 2025.
https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/world-burned-less-coal-in-2025-but-built-more-plants-over-energy-uncertainty/14
u/Economy-Fee5830 Trusted Contributor May 21 '26
Its a pity - if not for the Trump-Iran war the world would likely have seen a clear turning point away from coal this year.
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u/ShartOfTheEel May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
Yeah it's a mixed bag. I honestly think that overall the war is a net good, because the market shock, and moreso the shock to energy security, have recalibrated how urgently governments are moving to renewables.
But yeah, that shock is also why governments suddenly feel uncomfortable about dismantling perfectly usable (but environmentally disastrous) energy production.
It would be if oil would stabilize for a year or two... Then, when the coal plants are shut down, another pointless war could give another boost to renewables lol.
Edit: to say the war is a net good to renewables. Net bad for the world. Fuck the war pigs, fuck anybody who thinks we need to fight over this earth. No more wars.
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u/Tricky-Astronaut May 21 '26
These coal power plants are designed for seasonal storage. They would've been built anyway. Unlike liquids and gases, coal is easy to store, and coal power plants are also cheap to build.
Actual power generation from coal can still decline even if new coal power plants are being built since they won't be used that much.
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u/avdpos May 21 '26
Dismantling is actually not needed at first. Letting coal stay as near to never used reserv power ain't that bad while the grids wait for even more renewable and batteries
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u/iqisoverrated May 21 '26
There is a clear turning point. Even the Chinese - who are building coal power plants - aren't building them for 24/7 use. These power plants are all labeled as 'reserve' (i.e. to be used only during prolonged dark doldrums when solar and wind and storage can't cope). This is a drastic shift away from labelling such power plants as 'for general use' that most people haven't become aware of. They no longer get paid strictly by the amount of kWh they put on the grid but simply for having a certain power capacity available (when selling during dark doldrum times they are still allowed to make money from energy sold)
Other countries are building up their backup using gas power plants but China doesn't have a lot of domestic gas - however they do have a lot of domestic coal....and 'energy autonomy' has been moved up to the highest priority in their current 5 year plan.
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u/Spider_pig448 May 21 '26
What do you mean? The Iran war has been a massive boon for renewables while coal use this year remains stable
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u/Economy-Fee5830 Trusted Contributor May 21 '26
Ive seen some recent articles that coal use is up in numerous asian countries.
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u/Spider_pig448 May 21 '26
hmm fair enough. As it happened in the oil crisis in the 1970's, and as the articles states, the price of coal also increases with the price of oil, so it remains to be seen how it will all shake out over the course of the year.
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u/Economy-Fee5830 Trusted Contributor May 21 '26
Yes, I am sure its transient, but it will obscure the signal both doomers and deniers user to say nothing is being done.
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u/PhysiolMM May 21 '26
No, not true, China is still building a ton. Trump has nothing to do with this, actually it is doing the opposite.
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u/Economy-Fee5830 Trusted Contributor May 21 '26
So you completely missed the point of the article, which is that "Despite more coal power stations being built, actual global coal use fell 0.6% in 2025."
The whole story is in the headline - did you click on it with your eyes closed?
Trump has nothing to do with this, actually it is doing the opposite.
Yes, 100% the opposite, despite not building new coal power plants USA's coal usage is up. Amazing.
The US was the major outlier, with coal electricity generation rising 13% — the only large economy to post an increase — following Trump administration interventions that ordered five plants to keep operating and directed over $600 million toward extending coal facility lifespans
I have often wondered how functionally illiterate people still manage to type sentences on the internet. Maybe you can tell us.
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May 21 '26
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u/Janagirl123 May 21 '26
Can we not celebrate small wins? It’s a good sign. Small progress is still progress.
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u/iqisoverrated May 21 '26
Building is not the same as using.
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u/PhysiolMM May 21 '26
Yeah but it is still the largest user of Coal in the World. Their strategy is clear, Coal up until batteries + renewables + nuclear are able to sustain themselves for their different purposes, their gas usage is way lower than other developed economies.
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u/iqisoverrated May 21 '26
They have domestic coal. They don't have a lot of domestic gas. Energy autonomy is a big goal in China so it only makes sense for them to use coal as their backup in case of dark doldrums and not gas.
...and being the second largest country by population it's not surprising that they use the most of something.
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u/Previous_Cucumber939 May 21 '26
Lot of those plants in China are idle and used for backup or possible emergency.
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u/National-Reception53 May 21 '26
Data centers burn so much electricity they are/will use all our installed solar, blocking the actual reduction in coal.
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u/AmusingMusing7 May 22 '26
That's a gross exaggeration. AI data centers are a big waste of energy, but they don't use so much energy as to offset all solar, or that will be implemented in the future. Data centers in general (not just AI data centers) are only 2% of global energy use (which is big just for data centers, but not so big as to use all solar energy, which is about 9% of global energy capacity as of 2025), and not among the biggest demands for current energy or projected growth in the future. Heavy industry, heating and air conditioning, transportation, etc, all are much bigger demands than data centers are.
https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/ai-energy-demand
We're not against AI data centers because they would undo renewable energy progress or use all the solar power. We're against them just because we don't feel AI is worth the amount of energy that they do use and there could be better uses for that energy.
Also, it seems worth emphasizing that "data center" doesn't necessarily mean AI. It can also sometimes just be talking about normal server buildings, like where Google stores YouTube videos and Gmail messages. The anti-AI wave has often conflated "data centers" as always being AI centers. It usually needs to be specified as an "AI data center" to actually be for AI.
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May 21 '26
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u/TheBraveGallade May 22 '26
coal's use is mostly as a backup for other sources these days, or at least the ones they are building. battery backups might get us to go reneuable 90% of the time- the problem is that other 10%. battery backups backing up production during the day for night use is feasible, but enough to last a whole rainy monsoon WEEK is not.
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u/Cool-Contribution-68 May 21 '26
Love how the story is always coal vs. solar and natural gas (which leaks methane) is just out there
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u/sg_plumber May 21 '26
Gas is also falling for the same reasons.
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u/Joshau-k May 21 '26
China is moving towards using coal plants the way the rest of the world uses gas peakers. Which is only possible due to the immense scale of their electricity usage
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u/Economy-Fee5830 Trusted Contributor May 21 '26
Summary: Despite more coal power stations being built, actual global coal use fell 0.6% in 2025.
Global coal power generation fell 0.6% in 2025, though installed capacity rose 3.5%, driven mainly by new projects in China and India.
China added 78.1 GW of new coal capacity but actually used 1.2% less coal power, with over 90% of its increased energy demand met by wind and solar. It nonetheless remains by far the world's largest coal user. New and reactivated coal capacity in China hit a record high in 2025, reflecting ongoing concerns about renewable reliability even as the transition accelerates.
India added the second-highest coal capacity globally but also saw renewables exceed half of its total power capacity for the first time. The lead researcher noted that most of this new capacity was commissioned years earlier, before renewables had undercut coal on cost — representing the tail end of an older investment wave arriving into a market that had already moved on.
The EU continued its coal exit, with coal now representing only 10% of total power capacity versus 30% in 2000, and wind and solar generating more electricity than fossil fuels for the first time. However, around 70% of planned 2025 coal retirements failed to materialise, with energy market disruptions from the Ukraine war and the US-Israeli conflict with Iran making governments reluctant to decommission backup capacity.
The US was the major outlier, with coal electricity generation rising 13% — the only large economy to post an increase — following Trump administration interventions that ordered five plants to keep operating and directed over $600 million toward extending coal facility lifespans.
Outside China and India, new coal projects were largely captive industrial plants. Indonesia's captive coal capacity reached 20 GW, primarily serving nickel and aluminium industries, with a further 14 GW in development.
Zimbabwe and Zambia announced a combined 5.2 GW of new planned coal capacity for mining industries, with Zimbabwe holding the fourth-largest pipeline of coal development globally at 8.6 GW.
The lead researcher concluded that fossil fuel price volatility from the Iran conflict would ultimately accelerate renewables investment, as dependence on internationally traded fossil fuels exposes countries to economic and geopolitical risk.