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Asia’s Coal Boom is Bad News For Natural Gas
Natural gas bulls betting on the world’s largest and fastest-growing power market to drive global demand over the next couple of decades could be in for disappointment. According to Global Energy Monitor (GEM), Asia’s largest economies have three times more coal-fired power capacity under construction than gas-fired capacity, with coal accounting for ~45% of the region’s power generation. Asia’s largest economies are developing far more solar, wind and hydropower capacity than gas-fired capacity. According to GEM, across 10 of Asia’s largest economies, there is just over 1 million megawatts (MW) of new power capacity under construction, with coal & clean energy sources dominating the continent’s power development pipeline. Solar energy accounts for 26%, or 270,000 MW, of Asia’s power generation under construction, while new coal-fired capacity makes up the second largest share at 24% with just under 250,000 MW. Wind farms and hydropower plants account for a further 20% each, while gas-fired power plants account for a mere 7% share, or 70,000 MW. For some perspective, natural gas accounted for 43.1% of utility-scale power generation in the U.S. in 2023, renewable energy 21.4% while coal contributed 16.2%.
Asia’s largest economies are not about to ditch coal despite some having ambitious clean energy goals. China approved 66.7 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity in 2024, with Asia’s largest economy building coal-fired power plants at a record clip as it tries to counter the effects of drought on hydropower production. In 2024, China’s coal production reached a record 4.76 billion tons, a 1.3% increase from 2023, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). At the same time, 94.5 GW of new coal power projects started construction and 3.3 GW of suspended projects resumed construction in 2024, the highest level since 2015, with a large number of new coL plants slated to come online in the next 2-3 years.
“China’s government has put energy security and energy transition at odds with one another. Beijing has clearly stated that coal power will still grow at a ‘reasonable pace’ into 2030,” Greenpeace’s Gao Yuhe has told Reuters.
Meanwhile, two years ago, India’s coal minister declared that the country has no intention of ditching coal from its energy mix any time soon. Addressing a parliamentary committee, minister Pralhad Joshi said that coal will continue to play an important role in India until at least 2040, referring to the fuel as an affordable source of energy for which demand has yet to peak in India.
“Thus, no transition away from coal is happening in the foreseeable future in India,” Joshi said, adding the fuel will continue to play a big role until 2040 and beyond.
China Still Rules Renewable Energy
In sharp contrast, the global coal fleet outside China shrank by 9.2 GW in 2024, reinforcing China’s dominant role in shaping the future of coal power. China now accounts for 93% of global construction starts for coal power in 2024.
In yet another paradox, China remains the global leader in clean energy manufacturing.
Last year, China’s clean-energy technologies made up more than 10% of the country’s economy for the first time ever, with sales and investments hitting 13.6tn yuan ($1.9tn), exceeding the real estate sector. China’s renewable energy sales and investments dwarfed the global fossil fuel funding total of $1.12 trillion. China’s installed capacity for renewable energy, including wind and solar, reached 1,410 gigawatts last year, surpassing coal. China has become especially dominant in solar energy manufacturing, having invested 10 times more than Europe in wafer-to-solar panel production lines. China controls ~95% of the world’s polysilicon and wafers, prompting the International Energy Agency (IEA) to warn of the dangers the world is exposing itself to by relying so heavily on the Middle Kingdom for its solar needs, “The world will almost completely rely on China for the supply of key building blocks for solar panel production through 2025. This level of concentration in any global supply chain would represent a considerable vulnerability,” the agency wrote in a special report. Last year, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that China’s national underwriting for energy and other companies is creating oversupply and distorting global markets.“I will convey my belief that excess capacity poses risks not only to American workers and firms and to the global economy, but also productivity and growth in the Chinese economy, as China itself acknowledged in its National People’s Congress this month,” she added.
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