Coal Power Top 47 Countries

John Spacey, August 14, 2020

Coal power is the burning of coal, a fossil fuel, to produce electricity. This is a significant contributor to global carbon dioxide emissions and air pollution. As such, there are calls from organizations such as the United Nations to stop building new coal power plants and to phase out those in operation. The following is a ranking of countries according to the percentage of total electricity production that is from coal sources.

Rank	Country Name	Coal % of Total Electricity
1	South Africa	92.71
2	Poland	80.91
3	India	75.31
4	Kazakhstan	71.57
5	China	70.31
6	Australia	62.87
7	Indonesia	55.78
8	Morocco	55.53
9	Czech Republic	53.06
10	Cambodia	48.40
11	Zimbabwe	46.78
12	Philippines	44.51
13	Germany	44.26
14	South Korea	43.08
15	Greece	42.66
16	Malaysia	42.28
17	Niger	41.62
18	Netherlands	38.65
19	Chile	37.14
20	Ukraine	34.58
21	United States	34.23
22	Sri Lanka	33.71
23	Japan	33.15
24	Vietnam	29.57
25	Turkey	29.10
26	Portugal	28.72
27	Romania	27.64
28	United Kingdom	22.81
29	Guatemala	21.36
30	North Korea	21.29
31	Thailand	19.45
32	Spain	18.96
33	Italy	16.12
34	Russian Federation	14.82
35	Dominican Republic	12.86
36	Colombia	11.85
37	Mexico	10.87
38	Canada	9.84
39	Belgium	6.11
40	Brazil	4.72
41	Uzbekistan	4.09
42	France	2.16
43	Argentina	2.03
44	Myanmar	1.78
45	Bangladesh	1.69
46	Peru	0.84
47	Sweden	0.67

Notes

All data is sourced from World Bank Open Data and is from 2015. This is the most recent data available at posting time. Some countries have made progress in reducing their dependence on coal since 2015.

Data wasn't available for many countries. Countries with a population of less then 10 million were excluded from the list.

Australia stands out as having high dependence on coal amongst countries with a high GDP per capita.

China is the World's largest producer of coal power with over 1,000 gigawatts of coal-fired power and around 100 gigawatts under construction.

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References

UN, ‘Climate Emergency Is the Fight of Our Lives, for Our Lives’, Secretary-General Tells Summit, Urging That No More New Coal Power Plants Be Built after 2020, 23 September 2019.

World Bank, World Development Indicators, Electricity production from coal sources, 2020.

IEA Policies and Measures Database, OECD/IEA, 2020.

Reuters, Nearly half of global coal plants will be unprofitable this year: Carbon Tracker, Nina Chestney, April 8, 2020.

Coal Power Top 47 Countries

Notes

References

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