Here is The Economist on coal:
”Consumption of coal has been on a slightly downward-sloping plateau for some years. But the capacity to burn it continued to increase, suggesting that things might change. Now the world’s capacity to generate electricity from coal, too, has begun to drop (see chart 1). It is a significant milestone in the fight against climate change. For the world to meet the ambitions it set itself at the Paris climate summit five years ago, that milestone needs to quickly vanish in the rear-view mirror: coal’s decline needs to be made both steep and terminal. Coal-fired generation typically emits a third of a tonne of carbon dioxide for every megawatt-hour of electricity generated, around twice the emissions from a natural-gas plant. And although coal is used directly in some industrial processes, such as steelmaking, two-thirds of the stuff is burned to generate electricity—a role that many other technologies can fulfil more cleanly and even more cheaply.
But there is the “however”… Coal is still used widely:
Leave a Reply