You can add coal to the list of global commodities struggling during the pandemic. Prices haven’t yet turned negative (like oil), but coronavirus is accelerating the demise of the dirtiest fossil fuel. Social distancing measures mean energy demand has fallen across the board. Some of the smallest declines, however, are in the electricity sector. That should have been good news for coal. But it hasn’t turned out that way. In much of the world coal power is currently more expensive than gas and renewables, which explains why its share in the electricity mix has fallen in Europe, India, China, and parts of the U.S. The power markets in these four regions are large and varied. That makes the uniformity of coal’s decline even more surprising.
But perhaps it shouldn’t be. Policymakers and activists have spent years trying to reveal the true costs of coal’s environmental impacts, with the aim of making the fuel economically less attractive. Nearly half the world’s coal power plants are now running at a loss, according to the think tank Carbon Tracker.