It appears that 2023 was the year of ‘peak coal’ and that global demand for it will drop in 2024.
A wind turbine spins as exhaust plumes from cooling towers at the Jaenschwalde lignite coal-fired power station in Germany on 12 April 2007. Last year may prove to have been a pivotal year in the history of the energy transition. Tellingly, 2023 was also the hottest year to date on record, and two trends in energy demand speak to this state of affairs.
According to the International Energy Agency’s latest annual report on coal, demand for the fossil fuel in 2023 was expected to have reached a historic high of just more than 8.5 billion tonnes, a 1.4% increase over the previous peak scaled in 2022.But the IEA forecasts that 2023 will be the year of “peak coal”, and it’s downhill from here.
“By contrast… we do not see a major risk of coal use rising again among advanced economies. Coal power plants are being regularly shuttered in these economies, and industrial coal consumption is set to decline owing to weak industrial output, improved efficiency and increased switching to other fuels.”
As already mentioned, 2023 was also the hottest year on record, which would make it a poignant marker for the fossil fuel and its historical impact. Its use has been clearly linked by science to rapid climate change, which is why wind turbine demand – fuelled by mounting concerns about our blazing planet – also reached a record last year.
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