The recent Bloomberg New Energy Fund report shows that global electricity consumption increased sharply in 2021 as the world economy recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, but more importantly, wind and solar energy were able to produce more than 10% of the world's electricity for the first time in 2021.
But this good news undermines the fact that production and emissions of coal-fired power plants have also jumped to new maximums — their use has increased by a record 8.5 per cent between 2020 and 2021, because of the desire of many countries to compensate for drought losses and extremely high gas prices as quickly as possible.
"", said Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP, Bloomberg Philanthropies and Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for Climate Issues and Solutions.
For the first time since 2013, the BNEF report states that "coal power plants have made a major contribution to the growth of electricity production." Coal continues to account for the largest share of global electricity production, 27%, and this share can continue to rise in 2022. Although European coal stations contribute to this statistics, it is relatively small compared to the three main coal-generation leaders, China, India, and the United States, which account for 63% of the world's coal-burned coal.
China is the largest producer of coal power, accounting for 52% of the world's total coal use. India accounts for 11% of coal and the US burns about 9%. However, the US may be out of the three leaders because, according to BNEF, it is the only country among the top 10 coal users that has reduced its consumption since the beginning of the decade.
According to BNEF, natural gas is still at the forefront of new fossil-fuel electricity production, but this could change dramatically as natural gas supplies are threatened by events in Ukraine. After this week's North Flow gas pipeline incident, coal can become even more common on the European continent. Only Germany has a 3.2 GW capacity of coal-fired power plants in place, and BNEF has indicated that it expects Germany to introduce an additional 5.5 GW by the end of the year.
"," said BNEF.