Why Coal Staged a Comeback Despite Climate Worries
There’s little debate that phasing out coal-fired power plants is necessary to avoid the worst climate change scenarios. Yet rather than fade away, coal, the biggest source of carbon emissions, is experiencing a renaissance. Worries about global warming have been overtaken by more prosaic ones about keeping the lights on. Those concerns are the result of shortfalls of a different power source — natural gas — brought on by the disruptions of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: coal
The use of coal, a staple of heating and electricity-generation for decades, is in decline in the United States — supplanted by newly abundant production of natural gas — but is still dominant in some parts of the world. While economical, coal use is particularly problematic as international attention focuses increasingly on climate change.