The photo is sourced from energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com
Besides the EU, the United States is also reducing its coal-fired power generation. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), coal-fired TPPs in the United States reduced their output in the first five months of 2023 by 29% year-on-year, with the share of these TPPs in the overall energy mix falling from 20% to 15%. This is caused by the mothballing of coal-fired TPP infrastructure. According to Global Energy Monitor, as many as 34 coal-fired power units with a total capacity of 13.5 gigawatts (GW) were decommissioned in the U.S. in 2022. In the EU countries, the overall capacity of coal-fired TPPs dropped by 2.2 GW last year, with reductions reaching 600 megawatts (MW) in France, 552 MW in Germany, 300 MW in Greece and 733 MW in Spain.
The situation in China is somewhat different, as the country provided 59% (26.8 GW out of 45.5 GW) of new coal-fired TPPs launched worldwide in 2022. However, the construction pace of new coal-fired power plants in China is slowing down, with the total capacity of newly-launched coal-fired TPPs going from 66 GW in 2015 to 48.9 GW in 2019 to 26.8 GW in 2022. The key reason for this is the growing inter-fuel competition: according to Global Energy Monitor, China accounted for 26% of gas-fired TPPs (8 GW out of 30.6 GW) and 24% of nuclear power plants (3.4 GW out of 14.1 GW) brought into operation worldwide in 2022.
At the same time, China’s role in the renewable energy segment is even bigger: according to IRENA, the country provided 46% of the global increase in wind and solar power generation capacity in 2022 (123 GW out of 266 GW). This is why the growth rates of coal-fired power generation in China are likely to slow down in the coming years.
