These are some of the conclusions drawn by the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2018 report released this week, which also finds wind and solar are now two of the top three global energy generation sources.
Australasian director of energy finance studies Tim Buckley says he is not surprised to see another round of cuts to global coal demand under the 2018 World Energy Outlook's New Policies Scenario.
"We don't believe global coal consumption will ever regain the 2014 peak, and given relative pricing trends, we can expect to see more coal forecast downgrades in the WEO 2019 report," Buckley said.
"Technology and relative costs have moved on, as has the global community's willingness to tolerate coal pollution.
"The IEA is also forecasting 560GW of end-of-life coal plant closures by 2040 under the New Policies Scenario (24GW annually). The IEA assumes coal carbon capture and storage will be commercialised well before 2040 and that will allow financiers to invest upwards of US$1 trillion to build 740GW of new, largely imported coal-fired power by 2040," Buckley said.
