May 26, 2026 - The number of coal-fired power plants continued to grow on a global basis in 2025 but, despite the increase, the amount of energy generation from fossil fuels fell.

A new report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM) found that while global coal capacity increased by 3.5% in total 2025, coal-fired generation fell by 0.6%. This divergence was most pronounced in China and India, where record-breaking wind and solar additions met almost all new demand, displacing coal even as plant commissioning reached decade-highs.

Coal produces significantly more CO2 per unit of energy than other fossil fuels, such as oil and natural gas, because it contains a higher carbon content. Climate experts have said that countries need to move away from coal or risk failing to reduce carbon emissions enough to tackle climate change.

Despite this, many countries are still building new plants, China’s state planner and energy regulator has said that new coal-fired power will be necessary during the transition away from fossil fuels to meet peak power demand and stabilise the grid. In all, China has more than 500 GW of coal-fired capacity in development. If built, the projects would commit China to years of coal expansion well into its 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026–2030), during which the government has pledged to reduce coal consumption.

Furthermore, although US coal capacity shrank slightly in 2025, its generation grew substantially. This was largely due to a historic surge in overall US electricity demand due to a boom in data centres as well as increases to natural gas prices in the wake of the Iran war.

In 2025, only 32 countries were proposing or building new coal plants – down from 38 the prior year and less than half of the 75 countries doing so in 2014. Just 5% of global coal power construction is outside China and India. Latin America achieved No New Coal status in 2025 and South Korea has committed to a full phaseout, accelerating the trend of countries formally exiting coal development. 

Christine Shearer, project manager of GEM’s Global Coal Plant Tracker, said: “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. 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.”

Globally, nearly 70% of coal-fired units scheduled to retire in 2025 did not do so, including 69% of scheduled retirements in the EU and 59% in the US. In the EU, most missed retirements reflect postponements that began during the 2022–23 energy crisis, even as formal coal phaseout commitments remain in place. In the US, retirement delays were more directly tied to government intervention that kept ageing coal plants online through explicit orders.