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The report 'Boom and Bust Coal 2026' analyzes global coal power trends in 2025, highlighting a growing divergence between increasing installed capacity and decreasing actual generation. While China and India continue to expand capacity for energy security, global coal development is concentrating in fewer countries, and several nations, including South Korea, have committed to phase-outs.

The May 2026 report by Global Energy Monitor analyzes the global state of coal power, highlighting a growing divergence where coal capacity increases while actual generation declines. While the number of countries pursuing new coal development is shrinking, significant expansions continue in China and India, often framed as system security measures. The report provides detailed regional analyses, noting that Latin America has reached a status of no new coal plants, although some countries in the region face setbacks in decommissioning existing facilities.

The May 2026 report 'Boom and Bust' by Global Energy Monitor analyzes the global coal power portfolio, highlighting a growing divergence between the installation of new coal capacity and actual electricity generation. While global capacity increased by 3.5% in 2025, generation fell by 0.6%, with coal increasingly serving as a backup rather than a primary energy source. The report details regional trends, noting that new construction is heavily concentrated in China and India, while other regions face stagnation or decline due to financing constraints and energy transitions.

This report by Global Energy Monitor and various partners analyzes the state of global coal-fired power generation in 2025 and early 2026. It highlights a growing divergence where global coal capacity continues to increase—driven primarily by China and India—while actual generation decreases as renewables displace coal. The document details regional trends, noting that while Latin America has reached a 'No New Coal' status, several countries in the region are experiencing delays in planned plant retirements due to political pressure or energy security concerns.

The 'Boom and Bust 2026' report by Global Energy Monitor analyzes global coal power trends in 2025, highlighting a divergence where new capacity continues to be added—primarily in China and India—despite a decline in actual electricity generation. The report notes that coal is increasingly serving as backup capacity for system security rather than a primary source, while the number of countries planning new coal projects has decreased to 32. A significant portion of the document focuses on Turkey, detailing the tension between strong social demand for energy transition and government policies that continue to support coal through guaranteed purchase mechanisms.

The report 'Boom & Bust Coal 2026' by Global Energy Monitor analyzes the global coal power portfolio in 2025, highlighting a divergence where coal capacity continued to grow despite a decrease in actual coal-fired electricity generation. The document details regional trends, noting that new coal development is increasingly concentrated in China and India, while other regions like Latin America have ceased new coal projects. It also examines the specific challenges facing Ukraine's energy infrastructure due to Russian attacks and the debate over whether to restore old coal plants or transition to decentralized renewable energy.

The Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) has issued guidelines for its May 2026 Innovation Challenges, a call for proposals seeking transformative resilience solutions from entrepreneurs and organisations in the Global South. The initiative offers selected winners up to US$50,000 in funding and a comprehensive support package including mentoring, a leadership academy, and communications assistance to scale innovations that address climate and environmental risks.

The report 'Boom & Bust Coal 2026' bySS analyzes global coal power trends in 2025, highlighting a growing gap where coal capacity is increasing while actual electricity production isS is declining. This trend is most prominent in China and India, where coal plants are increasingly used as 'system insurance' to support the integration of renewables. While the number of countries pursuing new coal projects is decreasing, Indonesia remains a significant outlier, expanding coal capacity primarily through 'captive' power plants for mineral processing (nickel and aluminum) and facing regulatory contradictions between its climate commitments and energy planning documents.

This report by Ember examines the effectiveness of satellite monitoring in detecting methane emissions from global hard coal mines, noting a significant gap between theoretical detectability and actual observations.

An Ember report finds that global coal mine methane (CMM) emissions remained broadly steady between 2021 and 2023, despite an 8% increase in global coal production. The report highlights significant discrepancies between official UNFCCC-reported data and independent estimates, noting that six of the nine largest emitters failed to submit official 2023 CMM data.

The Global Coal Mine Methane Review 2026 reports that coal mine methane (CMM) emissions have remained steady at approximately 35 million tonnes despite rising coal production since the 2021 Global Methane Pledge. The report highlights a critical lack of transparency, estimating that 89% of emissions were unreported to the UNFCCC in 2023, and that 87% of global coal production relies on generic emission factors rather than direct measurements. While satellite monitoring is increasing, it currently captures emissions from only 10% of global hard coal production. The report concludes that existing technologies could reduce CMM emissions by 54-63% by 2030, with some measures available at no net cost, and that such reductions are affordable relative to industry profits.

This research paper by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) analyzes the misalignment of global public finance, noting that in 2024, public support for fossil fuels exceeded USD 1.2 trillion, nearly five times the USD 254 billion provided to clean energy. The report examines fossil fuel subsidies, G20 renewable energy support, state-owned enterprise (SOE) capital expenditure, and international public finance, arguing that governments must shift from blanket subsidies to targeted social protection and clean energy investment to reduce fiscal exposure and energy vulnerability.

This report argues that electricity planning in Southeast Asia (specifically Indonesia, Viet Nam, Thailand, and the Philippines) is overly focused on GDP and industrial growth, leading to a 'well-being gap' where essential services and households lack reliable power despite sufficient aggregate generation. Using a Decent Living Standards framework, it estimates a 'Sufficiency Floor' of 620–1,270 kWh per capita per year and calls for a governance shift toward guaranteed delivery of this minimum requirement through tariff reforms and Beyond GDP frameworks.

The report argues that betting on long-term growth for metallurgical coal (met coal) is a losing strategy as demand plateaus due to China's economic shift and the rise of low-carbon steel production. It highlights the risk of stranded assets given the volume of planned mine expansions and recommends that governments accelerate the transition to green steel through subsidy reform and public procurement.

The global electricity sector has transitioned from fossil-fuelled growth to clean growth, with clean power meeting all global demand growth in 2025. This shift is driven largely by the plateauing of fossil generation in China and the rapid scale-up of solar and wind power. Battery storage is now emerging as a critical technology to displace fossil fuels during non-daylight hours, particularly in high-solar regions.

This briefing by Zero Carbon Analytics explains the mechanisms of El Niño, its interaction with climate change, and its global socio-economic and environmental impacts. It highlights a 61% chance of an El Niño event emerging between May and July 2026, noting that human-caused warming is likely increasing the frequency and severity of such events, while simultaneously making them harder to predict.

This research paper examines the potential for triangular cooperation between the European Union (EU), Indonesia, and African nations in the critical raw materials (CRM) sector. It argues that while the EU and Indonesia currently employ different partnership models in Africa—the EU focusing on supply chain integration and ESG standards, and Indonesia focusing on downstream industrialisation and South-South cooperation—these differences are complementary. The authors propose a framework where EU financial instruments and ESG expertise combine with Indonesia's technical experience in mineral processing to support African goals of local value addition and industrialisation, thereby reducing all parties' dependence on China.

This briefing from RMI and the New Energy Industrial Strategy (NEIS) Center analyzes the global energy crisis triggered by the US-Iran war. It argues that while governments are currently relying on short-term fixes like strategic reserves and subsidies, the crisis provides an opportunity to accelerate the transition to clean energy, electrification, and efficiency to reduce long-term vulnerability to volatile global fuel markets.

The research paper 'The New Twin Fossil Shock' analyzes how two major energy crises in the 2020s—the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the 2026 shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz—are accelerating the global transition to an 'electric age.' The authors argue that unlike the oil shocks of the 1970s, current alternatives such as solar, wind, and electric vehicles (EVs) are cost-competitive, scalable, and provide a permanent route out of fossil fuel dependency.

The research paper argues for a binding international agreement on fossil fuel subsidies within the WTO framework to address global negative externalities and climate change. It proposes using the Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability (ACCTS) as a model, specifically highlighting the Standardized Carbon Rate Measurement (SCRM) as a way to move beyond definitional debates. The authors suggest that successful subsidy reduction must be linked to a state's capacity to transition to green energy and may require WTO waivers on local content requirements to support renewable energy transitions.