China accounted for 95% of the world’s new coal power construction activity in 2023, according to the latest annual report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
Construction began on 70 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity in China, up four-fold since 2019, says GEM’s annual report on the global coal power industry.
This compares with less than 4GW of new coal power construction starting in the rest of the world – the lowest since 2014.
Outside China, only 32 countries have new coal projects at pre-construction phases of development and just seven have plants under construction.
While global coal power capacity – both overall and outside China – grew in 2023, GEM says this is likely to be a “blip” that will be offset by accelerating coal retirements in the next few years in the US and Europe.
Other key findings of the report include that construction of coal-fired power plants globally – excluding China – declined for the second year in a row. However, coal power plant retirements were also at the lowest level since 2011.
‘Pivotal juncture’ for China
In China, 47.4GW of coal power capacity came online in 2023, GEM says. This increase accounted for two-thirds of the global rise in operating coal power capacity, which climbed 2% to 2,130GW.
China’s 70.2GW of new construction getting underway in 2023 represents 19-times more than the rest of the world’s 3.7GW. As the figure below highlights, the country’s trajectory (red line) is diverging significantly from the rest of the world (orange line).
The level of new construction starting in China is nearly quadruple what it was in 2019, when the country hit a nine-year annual low of entirely new coal power stations starting.
This is the fourth year in a row that the amount of new coal construction starting has increased in China. This is out of line with President Xi Jinping’s 2021 pledge to “strictly control” new coal power capacity, GEM states.
In early 2022, China’s National Energy Administration’s 14th five‐year plan for a “modern energy system” stated that 30GW of coal power would be retired by 2025.
However, when counting larger coal units with capacity of at least 30 megawatts, less than 9GW of power plants have been shut down in the last three years, and few others have plans to retire, GEM notes.
If China is to meet this 30GW retirement target, it “needs to take immediate action”, GEM adds.
In a statement, Qi Qin, China analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said:
“The recent surge in coal power development in China starkly contrasts with the global trend, putting China’s 2025 climate targets at risk. At this pivotal juncture, it is crucial for China to impose stricter controls on coal power projects and expedite the transition towards renewable energy to realign with its climate commitments.”
Collectively, China, India, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos, Turkey, Russia, Pakistan and Vietnam account for 95% of global pre-construction capacity, according to the GEM report.
The 5% remaining is distributed among 21 countries, the tracker finds. Of these, 11 have one project and are on the brink of achieving the “no new coal” milestone, it adds.
The tracker identifies 20.9GW of entirely new coal power proposals outside of China in 2023. This was led by India, which saw 11.4GW of new coal capacity proposed, more than any year since 2016. This was in part due to the revival of several stalled projects in the country, GEM explains.
Kazakhstan also saw 4.6GW of new proposals and Indonesia saw 2.5GW. Some 4.1GW of previously shelved or cancelled capacity is now considered “proposed” again.
Another handful of countries – Russia, the Philippines, Botswana and Nigeria – also saw revived proposals and construction restarting in 2023.
Retirements slow
Globally, a total of 69.5GW of coal power came online in 2023, while 21.1GW was retired, GEM finds. This led to the highest net increase in global operating coal capacity since 2016, with a 48.4GW jump.
New capacity also came online in Indonesia (5.9GW), India (5.5GW), Vietnam (2.6GW), Japan (2.5GW), Bangladesh (1.9GW), Pakistan (1.7GW), South Korea (1GW), Greece (0.7GW) and Zimbabwe (0.3GW).
In total during 2023, the tracker found 22.1GW came online and 17.4GW was retired outside of China. This resulted in a 4.7GW net increase in the world’s coal fleet operating outside China. Globally, coal power capacity reached 2,130GW in 2023, up from 2% a year earlier.
The US contributed nearly half of coal power retirements, GEM says, with 9.7GW shuttering in 2023. However, this is a drop in retirements from 14.7GW in 2022, and a peak of 21.7GW in 2015.
Elsewhere, the EU and UK represented nearly a quarter of retirements, with 3.1GW closing in the UK, 0.6GW in Italy and 0.5GW in Poland. There is now just one operating coal-fired power plant in the UK, with the Ratcliffe-on-Soar set to close in September 2024.
Overall, global coal power plant retirements were at their lowest level since 2011, as the figure below shows.
Outside of China, the number of coal-fired power plants starting construction declined for the second consecutive year, hitting its lowest level since data collection began in 2015, GEM notes.
Less than 4GW of new projects began construction outside of China in 2023, far below the average of 16GW between 2015 and 2022. Just seven countries started construction, with one plant each in India, Laos, Nigeria, Pakistan and Russia, as well as three plants in Indonesia.
Construction has not started on any coal plants in Latin America since 2016, and none has started in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), European or Middle Eastern countries since 2019, GEM says.
Nigeria’s Ugboba power station, located at the mine-mouth of the Idowu Falola Coal Mines in the Aniocha North local government area of Delta state, is the first known construction of a coal power plant in Africa since 2019, the report says.
The G7 – which accounts for 15% (310GW) of the world’s operating coal capacity, down from 32% (443GW) in 2015 – has no new coal capacity under construction. However, there is still one proposed coal power plant in Japan and two in the US.
Both of the proposed sites in the US, the 0.4GW CONSOL Project in Pennsylvania and the newly announced 0.4GW Susitna power station in Alaska, are expected to use carbon capture and storage technologies (CCS).
GEM says that these technologies are “effectively uncertain and expensive distractions from the urgent need to phase out coal”.
The G20 is home to 92% of the world’s operating coal capacity (1,968GW) and 88% of pre-construction coal capacity (336GW). Brazil, the current G20 chair, saw its pipeline of pre-construction capacity fall in 2023, but still has two prospective projects remaining – the last pre-construction coal power plants in Latin America.
No new coal nations
Overall, coal capacity reached an all time high in 2023, GEM’s tracker says.
Operating coal capacity outside China grew for the first time since 2019, as less coal capacity retired than in any other single year in more than a decade, as the figure below shows.
The world’s operating coal power capacity is up 11% since 2015, when governments agreed to keep the global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and aim to limit warming to 1.5C under the Paris Agreement.
Outside of China, there are still 113GW of coal power projects under construction. While this is only slightly up from the previous year’s level of 110GW, it still highlights that the coal sector is not in line with the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 1.5C scenario, GEM says.
Across all IEA scenarios that meet international climate goals there is a rapid decline in global coal emissions.
Globally, pre-construction capacity rose 6% in 2023, “crystallising the importance of calls to stop proposing and breaking ground on new coal plants”, GEM’s report says.
Only 15% (317GW) of currently operating coal power capacity has a commitment to retire in line with Paris Agreement goals, it adds.
Phasing out unabated coal generation by 2040 – in line with the IEA’s 1.5C pathway – would require an average of 126GW of retirements every year for the next 17 years, GEM notes. This is the equivalent of two coal power plants per week.
Even steeper cuts would be needed to account for the 578GW of coal power plants also under construction and in pre-construction phases of development, GEM says.
There were 12 new countries that committed to developing no new coal generation in 2023, by joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance. This brings the total number of countries up to 101 that have either formally declared they will have no new coal or have abandoned any coal plans they have had over the last decade, GEM notes.
Since 2015, there has been a 68% reduction in global pre-construction capacity, GEM found. New construction starts are now at their lowest level outside of China, since data collection began.
GEM’s report suggests that coal power projects that utilise CCS and those used to power industrial activities may be “a last frontier” for new coal proposals.
For example, Zimbabwe’s 1.9GW of new coal capacity proposed in 2023 is made up of two projects, the Prestige power station and the Gweru power station, designed to power smelters for extracting chromium from ore.
Zimbabwe is one of one six countries, beyond China and India, to have increased its total planned capacity over the past year, along with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Zimbabwe, the US and the Philippines.
At COP28, 130 countries signalled their intent to phase out unabated coal power and stop investing in new unabated coal-fired power plants within this decade, by signing the Global Renewables and Energy Efficiency Pledge.
In addition, the final global stocktake agreement at COP28 reiterated the pledge from COP26 to phase down unabated coal power, but still does not define what “unabated” means. Additionally, wording from earlier drafts on ending permitting of new coal power was omitted in the final text.
“Coal power is at the edge of a precipice, facing political and civil opposition and increasingly uncompetitive economics,” GEM’s report states.
In a statement, Flora Champenois, coal programme director for GEM said:
“Coal’s fortunes this year are an anomaly, as all signs point to reversing course from this accelerated expansion. But countries that have coal plants to retire need to do so more quickly, and countries that have plans for new coal plants must make sure these are never built. Otherwise we can forget about meeting our goals in the Paris Agreement and reaping the benefits that a swift transition to clean energy will bring.”
The post China responsible for 95% of new coal power construction in 2023, report says appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China responsible for 95% of new coal power construction in 2023, report says
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The number of new coal-fired power plants built around the world hit a “10-year high” in 2025, even as the global coal fleet generated less electricity, amid a “widening disconnect” in the sector.
That is according to the latest annual report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM), which finds that the world added nearly 100 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-power capacity in 2025, the equivalent of roughly 100 large coal plants.
It adds that 95% of the new coal plants were built in India and China.
Yet GEM says that the amount of electricity generated with coal fell by 0.6% in 2025 – with sharp drops in both China and India – as the fuel was displaced by record wind and solar output, among other factors.
The report notes that there have been previous dips in output from coal power and there could still be ups – as well as downs – in the near term.
For example, nearly 70% of the coal-fired units scheduled to retire globally in 2025 did not do so, due to postponements triggered by the 2022 energy crisis and policy shifts in the US.
However, GEM says that the underlying dynamics for coal power have now fundamentally shifted, as the cost of renewables has fallen and low usage hits coal profitability.
China and India dominate growth
In 2025, coal-capacity growth hit a 10-year high, with 97 gigawatts (GW) of new power plants being added, according to GEM.
(Capacity refers to the potential maximum power output, as measured in GW, whereas generation refers to power actually generated by the assets over a period of time, measured in gigawatt hours, GWh.)
This is the highest level since 2015 when 107GW began operating, as shown in the chart below. This makes 2025 the second-highest level of additions on record.
The majority of this growth came from China and India, which added 78GW and 10GW, respectively, against 9GW from all other countries.
Yet GEM points out that, even as coal capacity in China grew by 6%, the output from coal-fired power plants actually fell 1.2%. This means that each power plant would have been running less often, eroding its profitability. Similarly, capacity in India grew by 3.8%, while generation fell by 2.9%.
China and India had accounted for 87% of new coal-power capacity that came into operation in the first half of 2025. The shift up to 95% in the year as a whole highlights how increasingly just those two countries dominate the sector, GEM says.
Christine Shearer, project manager of GEM’s global coal plant tracker, said in a statement:
“In 2025, the world built more coal and used it less. Development has grown more concentrated, too – 95% of coal plant construction is now in China and India, and even they are building solar and wind fast enough to displace it.”
Both China and India saw solar and wind meet most or all of the growth in electricity demand last year.
Analysis for Carbon Brief last year showed that, in the first six months of 2025 alone, a record 212GW of solar was added in China, helping to make it the nation’s single-largest source of clean-power generation, for example.
However, the country continues to propose new coal plants. In 2025, a record 162GW of capacity was newly proposed for development or reactivated, according to GEM. This brought the overall capacity under development in the country to more than 500GW.
China’s 15th “five-year plan”, covering 2026-2030, had pledged to “promote the peaking” of coal use, while a more recent pair of policies introduced stricter controls on local governments’ coal use.
For its part, in India some 28GW of new coal capacity was newly proposed or reactivated last year, bringing the total under development to 107.3GW and under-construction capacity to 23.5GW.
The Indian government is planning to complete 85GW of new coal capacity in the next seven years, even as clean-energy expansion reaches levels that could cover all of the growth in electricity demand.
Outside of China and India, GEM says that just 32 countries have new coal plants under construction or under development, down from 38 in 2024.
Countries that have dropped plans for new coal in 2025 include South Korea, Brazil and Honduras, it says. GEM notes that the latter two mean that Latin America is now free from any new coal-power proposals.
This means that both electricity generation from coal and the construction of new coal-fired power plants are increasingly concentrated in just a few countries, as the chart below shows.
Indonesia’s coal fleet grew by 7% in 2025 to 61GW, with a quarter of the new capacity tied to nickel and aluminium processing, according to GEM.
Turkey – which is gearing up to host the COP31 international climate summit in November – has just one coal-plant proposal remaining, down from 70 in 2015.
The amount of new coal capacity that started to operate in south-east Asia fell for the third year in a row in 2025, according to GEM.
Countries in south Asia that rely on imported energy are increasingly looking to other technologies to protect themselves from fossil-fuel shocks, such as Pakistan, which is rapidly deploying solar, states the GEM report.
In Africa, plans for new coal capacity are concentrated in Zimbabwe and Zambia, the report shows, with the two countries accounting for two-thirds of planned development in the region.
‘Persistence of policies’
While new coal plants are still being built and even more are under development, GEM notes that the global electricity system is undergoing rapid changes.
Crucially, the growth of cheap renewable energy means that new coal plants do not automatically translate into higher electricity generation from coal.
Without rising output from coal power, building new plants simply results in the coal fleet running less often, further eroding its economics relative to wind and solar power.
Indeed, GEM notes that electricity generation from coal fell globally in 2025. Moreover, a recent report by thinktank Ember found that renewable energy overtook coal in 2025 to become the world’s largest source of electricity.
GEM notes that coal generation may fluctuate in the near term, in particular due to potential increases in demand driven by higher gas prices.
It adds that gas price shocks, such as the one triggered by the Iran war, can cause temporary reversals in the longer-term shift away from coal.
According to Carbon Brief analysis, at least eight countries announced plans to either increase their coal use or review plans to transition away from coal in the first month of the Iran war. However, a much-discussed “return to coal” is expected to be limited.
GEM’s report highlights that global fossil-fuel shocks can have an impact on the phase out of coal capacity over several years.
In the EU, for example, 69% of planned retirements did not take place in 2025, due to postponements that began in the 2022-23 energy crisis triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to the report. Countries across the bloc chose to retain their coal capacity amid gas supply disruptions and concerns about energy security.
Yet coal-fired power generation in the bloc is now more than 40% below 2022 levels. Again, this highlights that coal capacity does not necessarily translate into electricity generation from coal, with its associated CO2 emissions.
Overall, GEM notes that “repeated exposure to fossil-fuel price volatility is as likely to accelerate the shift toward clean energy as it is to delay it”.
GEM’s Shearer says in a statement:
“The central challenge heading into 2026 is not the availability of alternatives, but the persistence of policies that treat coal as necessary even as power systems move increasingly beyond it.”
In the US, 59% of planned retirements in 2025 did not happen, according to GEM. This was due to government intervention to keep ageing coal plants online.
Five coal-power plants have been told to remain online through federal “emergency” orders, for example, even as the coal fleet continues to face declining competitiveness.
Keeping these plants online has cost hundreds of millions of dollars and helped drive an annual increase in the average US household electricity prices of 7%, according to GEM.
Despite such measures, Trump has overseen a larger fall in coal-fired power capacity than any other US president, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Meanwhile, according to new figures from the US Energy Information Administration, solar and wind both set new records for energy production in 2025.
Despite challenges with policy and wider fossil-fuel impacts, the underlying dynamic has shifted, says GEM, as “clean energy becomes more competitive and widely deployed” around the world.
It adds that this raises the prospect of “a more sustained decoupling between coal-capacity growth and generation, particularly if clean-energy deployment continues at current rates”.
The post New coal plants hit ‘10-year’ global high in 2025 – but power output still fell appeared first on Carbon Brief.
New coal plants hit ‘10-year’ global high in 2025 – but power output still fell
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