Coal is predicted to have a century-long future

Alexey Gromov, Principal Director on Energy Studies of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented on the long-term development prospects of the global coal market to the Tekface.ru multimedia project.

According to Alexey Gromov, coal will retain a significant role in the global fuel and energy balance for at least the next 10 years.

“The main reason: the continued strong demand for coal in China and India, which account for 2/3 of the world's coal consumption. Moreover, I do not exclude that coal will continue to play a significant role in the global fuel and energy balance in the future, provided that CCUS technologies are actively developed and scaled up to be used in coal generation to reduce the negative climatic effect of coal combustion,” he says.

In his opinion, the resolution adopted in Glasgow on the rejection of coal power generation is more a signal for the global coal market, and not a real instrument that can seriously affect it.

“The main reason is that the key coal-consuming countries, including not only China and India, but also the United States, Russia, Japan and Australia (which is almost 80% of the global coal market), did not support this agreement. In this regard, I think that the most noticeable changes can occur only in the geography of the world coal trade, which will increasingly focus on the Asian market, while the European coal market will gradually shrink. At the same time, Russian coal has every chance of gaining a foothold in the Asian market and even expanding its presence in it, given its good quality, reasonable price for buyers and the existing conflicts between consumers and traditional suppliers of coal in the region (coal "war" of China and Australia) "- Alexey Gromov says.

According to him, increasing the fuel efficiency of coal-fired generation in combination with the use of CCUS technologies can significantly minimize the negative climatic effect of coal combustion and extend the century of the coal industry for many countries of the world.