The decline in prices is largely due to a decrease in demand for coal in developed countries, where coal-fired power generation began to wane after the peak of the energy crisis. According to the Ember research centre, power generation in the EU fell by 25% in 2023, reaching 336 terawatt-hours (TWh), the lowest level in more than two decades. At the same time, the share of coal in the EU’s energy mix fell from 16.1% in 2022 to 12.5% in 2023. Meanwhile, coal-fired power generation in the United States fell by 19% (to 675 TWh) in 2023, with its share dropping from 19.7% to 16.2%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
As before the COVID-19 pandemic, India and China are once again becoming the main centers of growth in demand for power-generating coal. According to Global Energy Monitor, the capacity of new coal-fired thermal power plants (TPPs) being brought into operation in China skyrocketed from 27.6 gigawatts (GW) in 2022 to 47.4 GW in 2023. Along with India, China provided 76% (52.9 GW out of 69.5 GW) of the capacity of coal-fired TPPs launched worldwide in 2023. By the beginning of this year, another 139.8 GW and 30.7 GW of coal-fired TPPs were under construction in China and India, respectively. New coal-fired power generation facilities are also under construction in Indonesia (9.4 GW in aggregate capacity), Bangladesh (3.9 GW), Vietnam (3.9 GW) and South Korea (2.1 GW).
At the same time, growing interest in emissions reduction stimulates the use of clean coal technologies, including so-called ultra-supercritical power plants, the efficiency of which ranges from 44% to 46% (versus 37–40% for supercritical power plants and 33–37% for subcritical ones; the higher the efficiency, the less coal is required to generate a certain amount of electricity and the lower the CO2 emissions are). By early 2024, ultra-supercritical power plants accounted for 22% of the global capacity of operating coal-fired TPPs and for 72% of the capacity of those under construction.
However, high capital intensity is the downside of this trend. The EIA estimates that the cost of bringing 1 kilowatt of ultra-supercritical power plants into operation in the United States is $4,507 in the current regulatory and tax environment (versus $1,330 per kW for combined cycle plants). Moreover, the use of technologies that make it possible to capture 30% of carbon dioxide emissions raises this figure to $5,577 per kW, and to $7,176 per kW when capturing 90% of CO2.
