www.zerohedge.com If you live in a developed country, it’s been clear that the appetite for coal power is falling.
Not only has coal been singled out as a primary source of carbon emissions and air pollution, but, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins details below, it’s also been getting phased out in favor of cheap natural gas in some regions around the world.
In the U.S., electricity generation from coal has been dropping since the late 2000s, and in Europe the departure from coal has accelerated even quicker. In fact, it’s estimated that European coal power output could fall 23% in 2019 alone.
A Different Global Story
However, despite a growing consensus around the use of thermal coal in the West, the global story is actually quite different.
Today’s animation from SVT Nyheter details every coal power plant in the world from 1927 to 2019, and it shows that coal power — especially in South Asia — has continued to ramp up.
As of 2019, there are an estimated 2,425 coal-fired power plants in the world, combining for an operating capacity of about 2,000 GW and roughly 15 billion tonnes of CO₂ emissions.