The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that coal will catch up with oil as the world's leading energy source by 2022. In a report, the Agency says that increased demand from India and China are fuelling the push.
Natural gas offers the best hope of reducing carbon emissions in the short term the report concludes. It comes as the European Union acknowledged that it has been unable to fund a single project to capture and store CO2.
Economic and population growth in developing countries are spurring the drive for coal says the IEA, If no changes are made to current policies, coal will catch oil within a decade”
By 2017 the agency says global coal consumption will stand at 4.32 billion tonnes of oil equivalent, versus 4.4 billion tonnes for oil itself.
"Coal's share of the global energy mix continues to grow each year," says IEA executive director Maria Van der Hoeven. "If no changes are made to current policies, coal will catch oil within a decade."