Coal Use Hits Record High Despite Clean Energy Boom

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

Coal use reached a record high of 8.3 billion metric tons in 2022, providing about 36 per cent of the world’s electricity generation, despite an uptick in the demand for clean energy sources.

As global economies grappled with energy security, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China and India responded by boosting their coal industries, which overshadowed a decrease in coal usage in the United States and the European Union. Transitioning India and China away from coal is estimated to cost around $1 trillion, oilprice reported.

Nigeria currently does not produce any of its energy needs from coal, but rather depends on gas and hydropower and recently solar energy.

Even though it emits one of the least volumes of carbon worldwide, Europe and America have continued to pressure Nigeria and Africa to embrace the NetZero aspiration.

For years, climate experts have urged the world’s biggest economies to wean themselves off of fossil fuels. Instead, coal use is at an all time high, hitting a brand new record of 8.3 billion metric tons in 2022, up 3.3 per cent from the prior year, according to figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA).