Thread by @davidfickling

It is truly breathtaking the speed with which coal is vanishing from the world economy.

I remember writing in mid-2019 that the world's last coal plant will soon be built, and thinking I was going waaay out on a limb:

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

Now we have 190 countries turning 2019's contentious argument into 2021's reality, committing to end investment in new coal power and phase it out in major economies during the 2030s:

gov.uk/government/new…

There's a lot unsaid in that statement, and we really need to see the full text.

What about the other 7 countries in the UNFCCC who haven't signed up, and who are they? (Looking at you, Australia)

*When* does investment in new coal end, and *when* does the phaseout go to zero?

Crucially, which bits of this are China and India signed up to? Those two countries account for about two-thirds of the world's coal demand, and they're the major economies where it's not already in sharp decline.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

Still, the reversal here is absolutely stunning. At the time of the Paris Agreement, the @IEA central scenario was that the world would be burning 6.3 billion tons of coal a year in 2040.

Whatever "phaseout" means, it's not that.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

@IEA Another column from mid-2019 made another controversial argument: That the falling costs and rising deployment of renewables in India meant coal-fired power there may already be at or close to its peak and heading toward decline.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

@IEA I remember this piece getting a measure of ridicule at the time! But so far India's coal demand hasn't moved past its 2018 peak, and the latest @BloombergNEF New Energy Outlook reckons 2018 was indeed only a sliver off an all-time peak in the late 2020s.

@IEA @BloombergNEF Even the IEA, in its STEPS scenario which tends to err on the side of more fossil fuels, sees energy coal consumption in its latest World Energy Outlook only growing 20% to 2025 before declining 35% in the 2030s.

@IEA @BloombergNEF So, we really are in the grip of revolutionary change in the world energy industry. Coal has been central to grid power since the dawn of the first grids in the 1880s. It's now on its way out, faster than anyone imagined.

One correction to the above, and a reason to watch out for those devils in the details: it's not 190 *countries* that have committed to the coal phase-out, but 190 *entities* -- including banks, utilities, etc. That potentially leaves many of the big emitters not signed up.

It's really important that we see the final text of this agreement so we know which countries have committed to what, and when. But the speed of change we're seeing is dazzling, and beyond anything I would have expected even a few years ago. (ends)

By the way, I'm not meaning to blow my own trumpet in this thread. I can point to dozens of stories and takes which I got completely wrong.

But it's striking to me that two of the more out-there arguments I've made in recent years -- ones where I remember asking myself before publishing, "will this really hold up? am I going to be mocked and proved wrong?" look to have been very much on the money.

Presumptive bearishness about coal demand seems a pretty solid heuristic at this point.