- Thursday, May 02, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE International Energy Agency (IEA) on Friday (17) said rising consumption in countries like China, India and the US could raise global demand for coal-fired power to an all-time high.
The body made the announcement just more than a month after countries from across the globe met at a global climate summit (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, to pledge ways to deal with a major threat.
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According to the IEA, global power generation from the fossil fuel is expected to grow up to 10,350 terawatt-hours in 2021, up by nine per cent, thanks to a rapid economic recovery that has “pushed up electricity demand much faster than low-carbon supplies can keep up”, Reuters reported.
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Overall demand for coal, including for industries such as cement and steel, is expected to grow six per cent in the current year. While it will not go beyond the record consumption levels of 2013 and 2014, it could hit a new all-time high in 2022, the IEA said in its report.
IEA executive director Fatih Birol said the rise was “a worrying sign of how far off track the world is in its efforts to put emissions into decline towards net zero”.
The Paris-based agency said while China is responsible for more than half of the global coal-fired power generation and is expected to see a nine per cent year-on-year increase in the current year, generation in India is forecast to grow 12 per cent.
Reducing the use of coal was a major bone of contention at the COP26 talks with countries eventually agreeing to “phase down” consumption as part of their efforts to keep the global rise of temperature to as close to 1.5-degree Celsius as possible.
