With blistering speed, the rich countries that built their wealth on coal-powered industrialization are turning their backs on dirty energy.
Coal consumption in the U.K., the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, fell last year to less than 10% of its levels a decade earlier and dropped by nearly a third year-on-year in January and February, according to government data. At one point last month, fossil power as a whole dipped as low as 2.4% of electricity generation in Britain, the news site Carbon Brief noted. In the U.S., coal usage fell 17% during 2023 and will drop another 12% by 2025. In the European Union, the slump in coal power generation last year came to 26%.
There’s one notable exception to that brightening picture: Japan.