Ahead of International Mining’s annual World Coal article, which this year will look at new technology developments rather than coal projects, BP has published its latest edition of the Statistical Review of World Energy, its flagship report on key global energy trends. Once again, coal has proven itself to be the fastest growing fossil fuel in terms of consumption. Coal consumption grew by 3% in 2013.

The World Coal Association notes that “coal’s share of global primary energy consumption in 2013 reached 30.1% – the highest since 1970. Coal consumption was strongest in emerging economies, which comes as no real surprise. As one of the most affordable energy fuels, coal is the main source of energy in a number of developing and developed economies.

“Every year, there are calls to phase out coal. And every single year, consumption continues to grow much faster than that of any other fuel outside renewable energy. Coal has also provided half of the incremental energy demand globally since the beginning of the 21st century. History has shown that coal has fuelled national and global economies and will continue to play a critical role for the foreseeable future.

“Coal consumption is growing year on year. What we need to focus on now is how to minimise its climate impacts. This means investing in high efficiency, low emissions technologies, and eventually carbon capture use and storage (CCUS). Moving the current average global efficiency rate of coal-fired power plants from 33 to 40% by deploying more advanced technology could cut 2 giga tonnes of CO2 emissions. This is the equivalent of:

• India’s annual CO2 emissions

• Running the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme for 53 years at its current rate, or

• Running the Kyoto Protocol three times over.

“Every report like this delivers more evidence that the world economy needs coal. Governments need to start facing these facts head on and work together to facilitate cleaner and more sustainable uses of coal.”