Despite the rapid global expansion of renewables, coal demand – along with coal consumption – is expected to remain constant in 2024 and 2025. This is according to the biannual update on the coal market published by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The reason for this is „the strong growth in demand,“ especially in China and India. It has already driven global coal consumption up by 2.6 percent to a record high in 2023 – despite other major economies such as the USA, the EU, Japan and Korea continuing to reduce their dependence on coal.