Coal-fired power has been dying everywhere except where it poses the greatest threat.
Draw a line down the world around the longitude of the Nile. The region to the west — encompassing Europe, Africa and the Americas — has seen coal consumption drop by a quarter over the past decade. In the U.S., demand fell 43 percent on an energy-equivalent basis between 2009 and 2019, according to BP Plc’s latest statistical review of energy. In Europe, it slipped 23 percent. The U.K., cradle of the coal-fired industrial revolution, saw a 79 percent decline that has left its few remaining thermal plants barely operating since spring.
The trouble is what’s happening east of the line. Consumption there rose by a quarter over the same period, and since the region already accounted for about 70 percent of coal demand, that has driven the global tally up by nearly 10 percent. If Asia — and in particular China, which accounts for about half the world’s coal consumption — can’t break the habit, devastating climate change will be unavoidable.