A new report found that global coal use and capacity grew to an all-time high in 2023. 

Released by the Global Energy Monitor (GEM) on April 10, the report estimates that the global coal fleet grew by 2% last year. Two-thirds of that was driven by China, although the rest of the world's combined coal fleet also saw a “small uptick” for the first time since 2019. 

As many countries have made plans to phase out coal capacity, there was other more encouraging data pointing toward a decline of new construction starts outside of China for the second year in a row. China went in the other direction, where new construction starts increased for the fourth straight year, and hit an eight-year high.

According to the report, the U.S. plans to decommission or convert half its coal capacity to another fuel by 2035. The European Union and the United Kingdom have made commitments of their own that go roughly halfway toward climate targets laid out in the Paris Agreement. 

Despite that, the GEM says that “countries must ramp up phaseout commitments.” 

“Just 15% of the current global operating coal capacity has a commitment to retire in line with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to the critical threshold,” the report reads. “Phasing out operating coal power by 2040 would require an average of 126 GW of retirements per year for the next 17 years, the equivalent of about two coal plants per week.”