India Leads 11% Jump in Global Coalmine Proposals as IEA Puts Investment at 14-Year High
New coalmine proposals rose 11% last year, led by India, even as coal investment hits its highest level since 2012 and Hormuz disruptions harden Asian energy-security calculus.
Enough new coalmine projects were proposed last year to expand global supply by 2.5 billion tonnes annually, an 11% increase year-on-year, according to Global Energy Monitor. India drove much of that surge, accelerating new project proposals even as analysts debate whether long-term demand will support them.8
The IEA now expects global coal investment to reach $180 billion this year, up 4% year-on-year and the highest since 2012, with China accounting for roughly 65% of that total. Steam coal spending is rising 5% and coking coal 3%. The Hormuz shock has hardened energy-security calculations across Asia, where countries had been sourcing 80% to 90% of Gulf oil and gas exports — and the two damaged Ras Laffan LNG plants leave around 17 billion cubic metres of annual capacity offline even if the strait reopens, the IEA says.2
That geopolitical backdrop has pushed coal back into investment plans that many governments had quietly shelved. Coal's role as a domestic hedge against import dependency is a feature, not a residual habit, for both Indian and Chinese policymakers. The COAL ETF closed Thursday (2026-09-03) at $27.16, down 3.17% on the session, reflecting market scepticism about near-term prices even as long-cycle investment continues to rise. Newcastle physical coal was last quoted at $135.80 per tonne on Thursday (2026-09-03).2
China remains the dominant factor in any coal supply-demand calculation. The country consumed approximately 55.6% of global coal in 2025, according to data highlighted by Visual Capitalist, and coal supplied around 55% of Chinese electricity that year — even as China added more wind and solar capacity than the rest of the world combined, the IEA reports. India ranked second in consumption globally, and the US a distant third.7,5
Together, China and India produce nearly 69% of the world's coal-fired electricity. Because their shares are so large, even modest percentage shifts in their generation mix produce outsized swings in the global aggregate. Coal generation across Asia Pacific declined 1.2% last year, and that small reduction was enough to pull down the global total despite increases elsewhere.4
The United States provides an instructive contrast. U.S. coal consumption rose 10.4% to 8.7 exajoules, with coal-fired electricity generation jumping 13.1% to 804 terawatt-hours and domestic coal production rising 4.4%. Yet those figures sit against a depressed baseline: U.S. coal consumption remains around 62% below its 2005 peak, and coal-fired generation sits approximately 63% below its 2007 high. The recent uptick is a cyclical bounce, not a structural reversal.4
Europe is moving in the opposite direction. EU coal generation fell 3.6% and now accounts for just 2.6% of global coal-fired output — a share small enough that European policy decisions have become largely irrelevant to the global coal balance. ICE Endex TTF front-month gas closed Thursday (2026-09-03) at €71.76 per MWh, down 2.59% on the session, offering limited incentive for any remaining switching away from coal on the continent.4,3
The IEA's own projections show coal-fired plants generating 10,974 TWh in 2026, close to one-third of global electricity supply. That figure sits alongside over 2,100 GW of installed coal capacity worldwide. The combination of a large installed base, continuing Asian investment, and Hormuz-driven energy security concerns makes the IEA's own net-zero scenarios harder to execute than its headline renewable-build numbers suggest.5,1
India's role as the ignition point for new mine proposals adds a specific complication. Coal India's production dropped 8.5% in June (2026-06), falling to 57.8 million tonnes from 63.1 million tonnes in the same month of the previous fiscal year, according to a regulatory filing by Coal India Ltd — widening the gap between domestic output and demand that new mine proposals are meant to close, but on a timeline measured in years.6
Whether the 2.5 billion tonne pipeline of proposed capacity translates into operating mines before demand peaks depends substantially on how quickly LNG supply disruptions ease. JKM Asian LNG was last quoted at $23.76 per MMBtu on Thursday (2026-09-03). If Ras Laffan capacity is restored faster than the IEA currently models, the investment case for new coal supply in South and Southeast Asia becomes substantially weaker — leaving developers with assets that took a decade to build into a market that no longer needs them.2