Energy More coal despite the climate crisis: production at an all-time high

Despite its enormous damage to the climate, energy production from coal continues to increase - and there are few concrete plans to phase it out. This is the key finding of a recent evaluation by the environmental organization Urgewald.

Together with other organizations, Urgewald maintains a large public database on the coal industry - called the Global Coal Exit List. According to this, the coal-fired power plants installed worldwide currently have a capacity of 2,126 gigawatts - a good 11 percent more than in 2015, when the global community agreed on the Paris climate target to curb global warming.

Last year alone, 30 gigawatts of capacity were added - which corresponds to an increase that is greater than the entire coal-fired power plant capacity of Poland. A large proportion of the new power plants are being built in China - where renewable energies are being added on a large scale at the same time.

Coal production at a new high

"Nine years after the Paris Agreement was signed, the production of thermal coal has reached a new high and the global coal-fired power plant fleet is still growing," says Urgewald Managing Director Heffa Schücking, according to the press release.

At the climate conference in Dubai last year, more than 130 countries signed up to the goal of phasing out coal-fired power generation. However, according to the evaluation, there is a major lack of concrete implementation of this goal: according to Urgewald, less than five percent of the coal companies included in the database have announced a concrete phase-out date to date.

Coal phase-out crucial for climate targets

According to the International Energy Agency and the United Nations, industrialized countries must phase out coal in the next few years and other countries by 2040 at the latest in order to still have a chance of meeting the 1.5-degree target.

The Paris climate target refers to efforts to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era - and preferably to just 1.5 degrees. This target was agreed at the UN climate summit in Paris in 2015 and reaffirmed several times at subsequent climate conferences. The aim is to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis - such as more frequent and more severe heatwaves, droughts, forest fires, storms and floods.

SDA