Coal-fired power generation under development worldwide went down by 14 percent this year, following China’s promotion on cleaner energy, a Reuters report said on Tuesday.
Citing the Global Coal plant tracker by CoalSwarm, coal plants in preconstruction planning shrunk 14% to 932 gigawatts (GW) in July from 1,090 GW at the beginning of the year.
“It’s a combination of environmental concerns, including climate and health, along with the deteriorating economics of coal,” Ted Nace, director of CoalSwarm, told Reuters.
China dropped 114 GW of pre – construction pipeline, after vowing to close down 500 million tons of coal productions in three to five years to address oversupply.
Meanwhile, India shrunk by an estimated 40 GW. The Philippines and Indonesia have also restrained coal usage.
The overall decline of 158 GW is almost equivalent to European Union’s coal generating capacity of 162 GW, the study said.
Cheaper renewable energy sources and climate change, pollutions and water stress were seen to be factors that cause the cancellations of coal projects, University of Oxford’s Smith School director of Sustainable Finance Program.
“This trend will accelerate over time,” he said.
However, planned and built coal plants are still elevated to limit the rise in world temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius as set in the Paris Agreement in 2015.
CoalSwarm is a non – government and anti – coal group.