Energy & Science
Everyone Is Falling Out of Love With Coal Except China
- China makes up half of global coal generation in 2019
- Power sector CO2 emissions fall the most in three decades
Smoke billows from stacks as a woman wears a mask near a coal fired power plant in Shanxi, China.
Photographer: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
This article is for subscribers only.
Coal has few friends around the world, but China isn’t giving up on the world’s most polluting power-plant fuel just yet.
European nations from the U.K. to the Netherlands and Germany are leading the effort to eradicate the fuel from their power mix. Global efforts to drive the most polluting fossil fuel out of the electricity mix last year saw the biggest drop in coal generation and carbon dioxide emissions since at least 1990, according to Ember, the London-based think tank formerly known as Sandbag.