Growth in global coal demand to slow over next five years: IEA

Growth in global coal demand will slow over the next five years due to lower consumption in China and the United States and as renewable energy sources gain ground, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Monday.

The IEA said last year that the world's top coal consumer, China, could be facing peak coal demand for the first time due to measures to cap coal use to tackle air pollution and curb excess supply.

"In China, coal demand is in structural and slow decline driven by a new economic growth model and diversification of coal," the Paris-based IEA said in its medium-term coal market report.

Even though China's consumption is likely to have peaked, the country will still be the largest coal user over the next five years.

Its coal demand should decrease slightly to 2.816 billion tonnes of coal equivalent by 2021, compared to 2.896 billion tonnes of coal equivalent in 2014.

Globally, the IEA expects coal demand to total 5.636 billion tonnes by 2021, compared to 5.400 billion tonnes last year, when coal demand dropped for the first time this century.

This equates to 0.6 percent average annual growth from 2015 to 2021, below the 2.5 percent average yearly growth over the past decade.

"Because of the implications for air quality and carbon emissions, coal has come under fire in recent years, but it is too early to say that this is the end for coal," said Keisuke Sadamori, director of the IEA's energy markets and security directorate.