With the science becoming ever clearer that our window for taking meaningful action on climate change is fast closing, the need to further accelerate the scale and scope of climate action is evident. One of the biggest contributors, and potential reduction opportunity, is the substantial amount of existing and planned coal-fired electric power capacity around the world. With the coal plants proposed globally, many countries are not on pace to meet their near-term emission reduction pledges under the Paris Agreement—a first step toward longer-term decarbonization.
The most immediate and potentially low-cost option is to simply avoid building the large number of coal-fired power plants that have been proposed, but not yet built. Through our research on the state of global coal, CGS conducts analysis on the trends of global coal power—leveraging and building on new global datasets to paint a global and country-specific picture of coal power worldwide.