page_title: Peak coal
section_title: Peak coal demand
hierarchical_section_title: Peak coal / Peak coal demand
caption_attribution_description: English: World annual coal consumption 1981-2015
context_page_description: Peak coal is a concept describing the peak consumption or production of coal by a human community. Global coal peak consumption was in 2013.
  The peak of coal's share in the global energy mix was in 2008, when coal accounted for 30% of global energy production.
  The decline in coal use is largely driven by consumption declines in the United States and Europe, as well as developed economies in Asia.
  Peak coal can be driven by peak demand or peak supply. Historically, it was widely believed that the supply-side would eventually drive peak coal due to the depletion of coal reserves. However, since the increasing global efforts to limit climate change, peak coal has been driven by demand, which has stayed below the 2013 peak consumption. This is due in large part due to the rapid expansion of natural gas and renewable energy. Many countries have pledged to phase-out coal, despite estimates that project coal reserves to have the capacity to last for centuries at current consumption levels. In some countries coal consumption is still increasing, including countries in Africa and Latin America, as well as major producers and consumers, China and India.
context_section_description: Although reserves of coal remain abundant, consumption of coal has declined in many countries. In 2016, Scotland closed its last coal-fired power plant. This decline has resulted from the replacement of coal-fired electricity by gas and renewable energy, along with the decline of the steel industry in some countries. As a result, the term "peak coal" is now used primarily to refer to a peak and subsequent decline in global and national coal consumption. In 2016 experts estimated that China, the world's largest coal consumer, reached peak coal in 2013, and that the world may have passed peak coal. However, in 2017, for the first time in four years, demand for coal rose.
  As of 2015, China accounted for 50.0 percent of world coal consumption. Chinese coal consumption fell in 2014 and 2015. The last previous decline in Chinese coal consumption had been in 1997 and 1998. While consumption in China and the United States declined in 2015, that of India continued to rise and, in 2015, India surpassed the United States and became the world's second-largest consumer of coal.
caption: World annual coal consumption 1970-2015
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