Boom and bust 2016 : Tracking the global coal plant pipeline

The increases in China in the face of the four largest coal-burning economies alone.1 shrinking coal usage point toward dysfunction, both in power sector regulation and in capital allocation, Continuing a five-year trend, coal prices fell in 2015, as the country continues to approve and finance new pushing some coal mining companies into bank- coal capacity despite declining output of the current [...] A downturn in new coal power capacity in 2014, ity already under construction across the country, accompanied by a decrease in global coal consump- or under development in provinces and regions not tion and steady growth in coal plant retirements, covered by the new restrictions, means that much gave room for optimism that the bubble in coal plant more stringent measures will be needed to stop the [...] Coal mining and washing, power generation of retirements in the U. S. and EU, and intensifying from coal, industrial use of coal, and disposal of coal public resistance to coal projects across the world, air ash all consume and contaminate vast amounts of pollution is already one of the most important factors water, resulting in very significant but largely unquan- shaping the future of the coal i [...] The worldwide drop in coal consumption for power generation and rapidly falling Our estimate of the costs of the coal pipeline begins utilization rates for coal plants provide an opportunity with the assumption that status quo conditions con- to assess such costs and to consider the possibility tinue: i.e. [...] As shown in the figure, the cost of underutilized, the vast capital expenditure required the proposed coal pipeline dwarfs the estimated cost to build the coal plants in the proposed coal plant of providing clean energy access to those currently pipeline (US$981 billion) could serve other purposes, unserved.