Coal Plant Retirements: Tracking the Global Phase-Out Timeline
The global coal phase-out is not one timeline — it is at least three, moving in opposite directions at once. Rich, industrialized economies are closing coal plants years ahead of schedule. China and India are commissioning new coal capacity at some of the fastest rates on record. And the world's total coal fleet keeps growing even as individual countries retire it, because new builds in Asia outpace closures elsewhere. Tracking the phase-out means holding all three timelines in view at once.
The Global Scoreboard
More Capacity Added Than Retired, Again
Global Energy Monitor's Global Coal Plant Tracker, the most comprehensive public database of coal-fired generating units worldwide, shows 44.1 gigawatts (GW) of coal capacity was commissioned in 2024 against 25.2 GW retired — a net increase of 18.8 GW that pushed total global coal capacity to 2,175 GW, up 259 GW since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. The following year was more lopsided still: 2025 additions reached 97.4 GW, the second-highest annual total on record behind only 2015, while retirements slowed sharply across most of the world outside China. Global Energy Monitor estimates that to keep the 1.5°C Paris goal within reach, more than 140 GW of coal capacity must be retired every year for the next fifteen years — roughly two coal plants a week, a pace the world is not currently close to matching.
Two Very Different Regional Stories
Advanced Economies Are Ahead of Schedule
Energy think tank Ember's analysis of OECD power data found that coal-fired generation across the bloc's 38 member countries has fallen more than 50% below its 2007 peak, with solar and wind responsible for 87% of the decline. Fourteen OECD countries are already coal-free, and a further 13 have committed to a 2030 phase-out — putting nearly three-quarters of the OECD on track to meet the timeline the International Energy Agency says advanced economies need to hit to stay aligned with a 1.5°C pathway. The UK closed its last coal plant, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, at the end of September 2024, ending 142 years of coal power generation in the country that industrialized on it first.
China and India Are Still Building
The IEA's Coal 2025 report projects global coal demand will plateau through 2030 rather than fall sharply, as growth in South and Southeast Asia offsets declines in advanced economies. China alone commissioned 30.5 GW of new coal capacity in 2024 — 70% of the global total — and started construction on 94.5 GW more, the highest in nearly a decade, per Global Energy Monitor. India recorded 27.9 GW of new and reactivated coal plant proposals in 2025 and now has 107.3 GW in pre-construction planning. Outside China and India, coal development has nearly stalled: only eight countries now have more than ten coal projects at any stage of development, down from a far broader base a decade ago.
The United States: Retirements Are Slowing, Not Reversing
2025 Saw the Fewest Retirements Since 2010
U.S. Energy Information Administration data shows the American coal fleet's decline has hit a speed bump. The electric power sector retired just 2.6 GW of coal capacity across four plants in 2025 — the smallest annual total since 2010 — well below the 8.5 GW that had been planned at the start of the year. Operators delayed 4.8 GW of scheduled closures and cancelled retirement plans for another 1.1 GW outright, some following U.S. Department of Energy emergency orders to keep specific plants running amid tight regional power markets. That is a sharp reversal from 2022, when 13.7 GW retired — about 6.5% of the fleet in a single year. The EIA currently expects 6.4 GW of coal capacity to retire in 2026, though it cautions that recent policy shifts make these plans more uncertain than usual.
Company-Level Commitments Still Anchor the Timeline
RWE's Lignite Exit Shows What a Binding Date Looks Like
Corporate disclosures illustrate how a firm phase-out date translates into an operating plan. German utility RWE's 2025 annual report confirms the company shut down six lignite-fired power plant units in 2024 alone — including the Neurath C, D, and E units and Niederaussem E and F, totaling 2.1 GW — as part of a legally binding agreement with the German government to end lignite-based electricity generation by 2030, eight years earlier than RWE's previous target. By the end of 2025, RWE reported total generation capacity of 48.9 GW, of which 40.4 GW came from renewables and flexible generation excluding coal, with lignite's share of the company's power output continuing to decline year over year.
What Consultancies Expect Next
Wood Mackenzie's Energy Transition Outlook forecasts global peak coal demand will arrive in 2026, after which its base-case scenario projects coal-fired power generation will fall by roughly 70% between 2025 and 2050 — driven by competitive renewable costs, expanding battery storage, and a nuclear renaissance eating into coal's role. McKinsey's tracking of the energy transition notes more than a third of U.S. coal capacity has already retired over the past decade, replaced largely by gas and renewables, though the firm flags that rising electricity demand since 2024 has slowed the substitution and kept some power-sector emissions flat.
The Bottom Line
The phase-out timeline depends entirely on which map you're looking at. In the OECD, coal is closing years ahead of even ambitious targets. In China and India, it is still expanding to meet rising demand, even as renewables absorb most of that new demand growth. Globally, the net effect is a coal fleet that keeps growing in aggregate while shrinking fast in the economies that built it first — a divergence that is likely to define the next decade of the phase-out as much as any single retirement date.