The ‘coal’ truth and nothing but the truth?

Predictions differ on coal’s long-term role in the global energy supply mix

Coal will fall out of favor as a global energy source over the next three decades, says a World Bank executive.

“I think that coal in the next 30 years—we will see that it will go very much out of the energy mix more and more,” Riccardo Puliti, global head of energy and extractives for the World Bank, recently told CNBC.

“The model has been coal plus renewables. The model can be gas plus renewables,” he said. “I think 10, 12 years from now, we will see renewables and storage and nothing more than that.”

Puliti’s pessimistic views on the much-maligned fossil fuel are apparently not shared by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which sees the world’s appetite for coal remaining essentially flat through 2040.

Because of the expected growth in natural gas and renewables, in particular, the U.S. EIA sees coal’s share of total world energy consumption slumping from 27% in 2015 to 22% in 2040.

In 2017, global coal demand rose by about 1%, according to the International Energy Agency, driven by coal-fired electricity generation demands in Asia.

What does the future of coal look like? Well, that depends on who you ask:

• University of Michigan-Flint professor of economics Mark Perry: “If the politics of coal have never seemed so anguished, the economic prospects of advanced coal technologies with higher generating efficiencies have never seemed so promising.”
• American Electric Power executive Charles Patton: “We recognize that the future of (coal-fired power) plants is very limited . . . we don’t even have gas on the horizon right now. It’s all wind and solar.”
• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis economist Charles Gascon: “If new trends in electricity production continue, coal power plants may eventually become obsolete. But if the energy sector has taught us anything, it’s that we can’t rely on trends. New technologies are constantly reshaping our existing industries, and the coal industry could be no different.”

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