While global coal demand looks set to rise for the second year in a row in 2018, it is forecast to remain stable over the next five years, as declines in Europe and North America are offset by strong growth in India and Southeast Asia, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) latest coal market report, Coal 2018.
There is a growing number of countries announcing air quality and climate policies, coal divestment campaigns and phase-out announcements. And declining costs of renewables and abundant supplies of natural gas are all putting pressure on coal. As a result, coal’s contribution to the global energy mix is forecast to decline slightly from 27 percent in 2017 to 25 percent by 2023.
However, coal demand is growing across much of Asia due to its affordability and availability. India will see the largest increase of any country, although the rate of growth, at 3.9 percent per year, is slowing, dampened by a large-scale expansion of renewables and the use of supercritical technology in new coal power plants. Significant increases in coal use are also expected in Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Pakistan.
China will remain a main player in the global coal market, accounting for 14 percent of global primary energy, but will see a gradual decline in demand, dropping 3 percent over the period.