Increase of Coal as Fuel for Generating Electricity

2022 was clearly an atypical year, we were emerging from a pandemic that paralyzed the world for 2 years and, when we saw the light at the end, thinking that the return to normality was getting closer and closer, BOOM! , a war breaks out, which has further weakened the world landscape.

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For this reason, one of the most affected sectors was energy, since the pandemic delayed the energy transition to green energies, which came with significant growth. This delay was caused by the paralysis of production chains, combined with the war between Ukraine and Russia, which raised natural gas prices exorbitantly, causing a generalized increase in electricity costs.

This meant that an old acquaintance of mankind will return to the electricity generation landscape: coal, so this year the use of this fuel increased by 1.2%, which, at first glance, can be underestimated, however, with this increase, a historic record was broken, since humanity consumed a total of about 8 million tons of this mineral.

This increase in coal consumption caused a record number of CO2 emissions, since 2022 ended with a total of 40.6 billion tons of CO2, representing a 1% increase compared to 2021.

Consequently, this means a global setback in the mission of relying less and less on fossil fuels and represents several lessons, including, I consider the most important: to diversify our energy sources, because, if we only have one fuel that hog
a high percentage of electricity generation, any unavailability or price increase, would lead us to catastrophic scenarios.

On the other hand, another lesson that we must not overlook is to increase distributed generation capacity, that is, small green generators along the length and width of electrical systems, which are a fundamental part of ceasing to depend on “old fuels”, and one of their greatest advantages is the capital required, because it is more accessible to small investors.

Finally, it is important to consider that, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that global coal consumption will continue to increase until 2025, so more decisive measures must be taken to have alternative sources of clean energy, in addition to making electricity consumption by Users more efficient.