Per the IEA Coal 2024 report, China consumed approximately 56% of global coal demand in 2023 — and approximately 58% in 2024 — making the country a single-handed dominant force in the world's coal market. China consumes nearly 40% more coal than the rest of the world combined per IEA tracking. Within OECD economies, coal demand has been in structural decline for over a decade — U.

S. coal-fired power generation peaked around 2007 and has fallen approximately 70% by 2024 per EIA Electric Power Monthly, displaced primarily by natural gas (lesson en1_l5 covers shale-gas dynamics) and increasingly by renewables (lesson en1_l11). European coal consumption has fallen similarly through coal-plant retirements driven by EU emissions policy.

But within emerging markets, particularly China and India, coal remains the largest single source of electricity generation and a major industrial fuel. The 2022 European energy crisis (lesson en1_l9) produced a temporary coal-burn surge in Europe and the U.S.

as gas-supply disruption pushed power generators back to coal where capacity remained available; the surge has since unwound but not before reminding markets that coal remains the residual marginal supplier in many power systems.