By your statement I presume you are alluding to India sourcing ~70% of its energy consumption from coal (compared to ~40% by the US), according to this source. I should point out that the parent poster's dataset comes from 2014, whereas the article is talking about a much more recent transition towards renewables (the Paris accord was signed 2015 and India took part circa 2016).
The OP's point is still reasonable in terms of both absolute magnitude as well as per-capita, in that India, as a developing country and yet one of the most populous countries on the planet, consumes far less energy than developed states and is not as immediate a threat to life as we know it on a global basis, such as the US is. Indian policies towards coal consumption, no matter how progressive they can get, cannot hope to match the immediate impact their counterparts in the US can achieve today (and choose not to), and the current US administration does not really have grounds to point fingers elsewhere.
Still, when you look at the picture at the 'planet' level, taking into account the big 'giants' whose consumption per capita has yet to reach our western standards - say China, India - Coal is STILL the 1st source for electricity worldwide (source : http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene...)
It's consumption is deacreasing worldwide, sure...Maybe because resources of coal are in decline ? It's still the 1st resource to produce electricity, with 40% of electricity produced. (electricity is only one part of the energy we consume...)
Coal use as a percentage of total generation is down and Wind has taken off so your intuition is wrong here. In 2022, 7.5% of the worlds electricity supply came from Wind vs 35.7% from coal so 30x easily makes up the difference.
I'm not sure which part of it you believe is unreal, but I'll try to clarify;
- the 1% electricity consumption of total world consumption is real - based on research done by IEA (https://www.iea.org/reports/tracking-buildings/data-centres-...)
- The calculation on the effect of generating 200TWh of electricity from burning coal is 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 emission is real - the link in the article points to the estimation
- the fact that most of world's energy comes from fossile sources is real. While it's not 100% from coal, 67% is from fossile fuels; https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-information-2019
'In 2019, about 4,118 billion kilowatthours (kWh) (or about 4.12 trillion kWh) of electricity were generated at utility-scale electricity generation facilities in the United States.
1 About 63% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels—coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases. About 20% was from nuclear energy, and about 18% was from renewable energy sources'.
Like France, often cited as the the world leader, with around 70% of its generated electricity coming from nuclear. Or Belgium, with around 50%, or Bulgaria around 30%, or Czechia around 40%, Finland around 35%, Hungary around 50%, Slovakia around 60%, Slovenia around 40%, Sweden around 30%, Switzerland around 35%...
Compared to Australia's one nuclear power, which isn't even being used to generate power, or the US' 18%, or UK's 14%, or Canada's 13%.
Germany has 3% of coal usage and 1% of the population
China is certainly the biggest at 51% coal and 18% population though. India per capita usage is lower but total is 11% of coal
Coal usage is also going to spike in Europe due to the gas shortages in the near term
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