nature & planetOur World in Datalate 1980s · China
Almost all the growth in global coal use since the late 1980s has come from China
Global coal use has barely changed outside China since the late 1980s, staying at roughly 20,000 terawatt-hours. Over the same period China has expanded its coal burning enormously, and it now burns more coal than the rest of the world combined. That single country therefore largely determines whether the world's coal use and the emissions it produces rise or fall. The data shows how concentrated the coal story has become and why climate progress depends so heavily on Chinese energy choices. The same analysis compares coal with cleaner energy sources, showing how much deadlier and dirtier coal is per unit of electricity than alternatives.
Global climate targets hinge on China's power sector, since its coal decisions outweigh those of every other country combined. Understanding this concentration explains why energy policy in one country has worldwide consequences for emissions.
background
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as layers called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is a fossil fuel, formed when plants decay into peat which is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years. Vast deposits formed from wetlands called coal forests that covered much of the tropics during the late Carboniferous and early Permian.
Coal is used primarily as a fuel. While coal has been known and used for thousands of years, its usage was limited until the Industrial Revolution. With the invention of the steam engine, coal consumption increased. In 2020, coal supplied about a quarter of the world's primary energy and over a third of its electricity. Some iron and steel-making and other industrial processes burn coal.
From Wikipedia: Coal (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗.JPG)
