Should we be afraid of a coal renaissance? The IEA suggests yes, with its most recent analysis concluding, “global coal demand set to remain at record levels in 2023.” Germany famously reopened coal plants after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A slightly closer look suggests that coal is steeply declining in the US and Europe, leaving China, India, and a few Southeast Asia as the main coal growth areas.
Global coal is really a China story, so here’s coal from electricity since 2010 with and without China.
What about African coal?
I put South Africa on the graph but it’s still just 2% of the world’s total. The rest of the continent wouldn’t even show up on the graph. Yet two ways people seem to get riled up about future African coal.
Lumping all “developing countries” or “poor countries” together. Bundling African economies with the coal-dependent large Asian economies can create some scary numbers when you multiply (implausible) coal assumptions with (highly likely) population growth. Please don’t do that.
Lumping South Africa in with the rest of Africa. South Africa is an anomaly. It’s a high-energy economy that gets the majority of its power from coal. The rest of the region is low-energy and uses barely any coal. That’s why extrapolating African continental aggregates is highly misleading. Please don’t do this either.
Mistakes like these lead to some wild conclusions, like The Battle for Earth's Climate Will Be Fought in Africa (or alarmist academic studies here and here) all falsely predicting a coal surge in Africa. These studies help create doomsday media headlines like ‘Africa’s green energy transition unlikely this decade’ by the BBC or this one in the Economist.
Setting aside flawed models, what about the actual coal projects on the ground? Fortunately the good data folks at the Global Energy Monitor aggregate information on all announced coal plants. At the Energy for Growth Hub, we then analyze every possible coal plant in Africa by scouring public sources and try to make a reasonable finger-in-the-wind call on whether the project is likely to really happen or not.
The African Coal Death Watch says….
The latest analysis with my colleague Hamna Tariq just dropped. The table of all 27 projects is below, but here are the big takeaways:
African coal is tiny. Africa accounts for just 2.4% of global coal-to-power capacity, and nearly all of this is in South Africa. The rest of the continent accounts for 0.36%.
Two existing plants are expanding. Of all 27 announced projects, only additional units already under construction at Kusile in South Africa and Hwange in Zimbabwe are likely to become operational.
And… that’s it. No new greenfield projects seem likely to happen. All the other 25 projects are stalled, have no financing, or no recent news, so are very unlikely.
Even if we’re wrong about a few of these – or someone unwisely suddenly starts packaging new greenfield coal proposals – it won’t really matter to global emissions. The only conclusion to reach using a project-by-project view is that coal is dead in Africa.
Who cares?
If we need not worry too much about African coal project, what should we do? IMO:
Focus attention on the actual high-emitting nations and help them replace coal as fast as possible. That’s mostly happening via JETPs.
Stop using unfounded coal fears to push for blanket bans on all fossil fuels (ahem, UK and EU), when a little bit of gas use in Africa could help with clean cooking, reliable power, and industry.
Replace all the lofty unrealistic promises for climate finance with something actually new that will spur more clean energy investment in the countries that need it the most.
I’ll be sharing a big new idea for the US government soon, so watch this space!
I would argue... Africa has remained poor exactly because it has not developed its coal resource and build sufficient low cost reliable coal power stations
Only South Africa did so... with the result that it became the best developed African nation... now mismanagement and several other factors is threatening South Africa
I suggest the www.unpopular-truth.com that Africa needs to urgently need coal fired power stations to catch up with other developing nations. Cola is abundant and safe and low cost. Best coal technology is very efficient and clean with amazingly low emissions
What would a search for general news of energy production in the same region show? Is the news that coal is dead in Africa, or that energy development is dead in Africa? The later case would be bad news.