VIJAY JAYARAJ: Big, Beautiful Coal Here For Many More Years Despite ‘Green’ Demonization

As a boy growing up beside India’s railway lines, I found magic in the metallic thunder of passing trains. Now and then, freight cars piled high with black coal would roll by. That same evening, our lights would flicker out.

There, I’d sit still in the hush of a powerless night, staring into the warm dark, wondering why electricity was so elusive. Hours earlier, the answer had clattered past: coal, in plain sight, yet out of reach.

At the time, India lacked its currently extensive coal mining and power generation facilities. Today, however, coal is the backbone of energy production, supplying over 70% of India’s electricity. The dark evenings of my childhood have been brightened.

Other developing countries have learned from China and India how coal jump-starts economies and lifts millions from poverty. Now, they too line up for their share of the fuel that sparked the Industrial Revolution.

Global coal production reached an all-time high of nearly 9 billion metric tons in 2024. Chinese and Indian output continued to grow, and Indonesia set export records.

India is on track to burn twice as much coal as the U.S. and Europe put together – possibly within the year – while China has already surged ahead, consuming 30% more coal than every other nation combined.

Growing by almost 12% in 2024, India’s production is projected to climb to over 1 billion metric tons in 2025 – a harvest that would exceed America’s peak in 2008.

This week, Adani Power invested $2 billion in a 1,500 megawatt, ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plant in India’s state of Uttar Pradesh to supply one of the most densely populated regions in the world. 

Coal shipments to Southeast Asia are on a steady climb, with nations like Vietnam and the Philippines leading the demand. Annual imports across the region are projected to grow nearly 3%.

Rising production of South American crude steel will increase demand for metallurgical coal, which is converted to the coke required to make steel from iron. The continent produced 3.7 million metric tons of steel in March, up 6.5 percent from a year earlier, with Brazil contributing nearly 80% of the total.

With African energy production on the rise, South Africa remains the continent’s largest coal producer and consumer. State power utility Eskom uses coal to generate more than 70% of its electricity and recently added 800 megawatts of capacity to help stabilize the power grid.

Zambia and Zimbabwe are restarting coal-fired plants and advancing new coal projects to improve their energy security amidst power crises. Zambia’s largest coal mine, Maamba Collieries, is slated for an expansion.

Even the U.K. government, while still parading its “net zero” credentials, is, nonetheless, procuring coking coal to keep British Steel alive in Scunthorpe. The U.K. may import the fuel from Japan or Australia, presumably because mining coal from Britain’s indigenous deposits is more scandalous than the hypocrisy of its absurd climate policy.

In the U.S., President Trump has prioritized coal under a new executive order, fast-tracking projects like Warrior Met’s Blue Creek mine in Alabama, which will boost metallurgical coal output by 60% for export markets. Additionally, the U.S. approved the expansion of the Spring Creek Mine in Montana, enabling nearly 40 million tons of coal to be mined over the next 16 years.

The global coal-fired power fleet increased by less than 19 gigawatts in 2024, the lowest net rise in two decades. This is due to retirement of coal plants in Europe and the transition to more modern coal plants in Asia. Coal prices, too, have been sluggish in recent months.

Nevertheless, sustained growth and demand in the existing coal markets of Asia and the emerging markets of Africa and Southeast Asia will continue to propel production and consumption across the world. In 2024, coal accounted for 35% of total power generation globally, the highest among all sources of energy generation.

Coal is expected to dominate the energy sector for at least three more decades, barring a disruption by rapid innovation that would enable its economical displacement. Similarly, the mineral will continue to play a crucial role in iron and steel production absent development of a viable alternative.

Predictions to the contrary are just so much hot air – largely from those most averse to a warming atmosphere.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.