As a boy growing up beside India’s railway lines, I found magic in the metallic thunder of passing trains. Now and then, freight cars piled high with black coal would roll by. That same evening, our lights would flicker out.

There, I’d sit still in the hush of a powerless night, staring into the warm dark, wondering why electricity was so elusive. Hours earlier, the answer had clattered past: coal, in plain sight, yet out of reach.

At the time, India lacked its currently extensive coal mining and power generation facilities. Today, however, coal is the backbone of energy production, supplying over 70% of India’s electricity. The dark evenings of my childhood have been brightened.

Other developing countries have learned from China and India how coal jump-starts economies and lifts millions from poverty. Now, they too line up for their share of the fuel that sparked the Industrial Revolution.

Global coal production reached an all-time high of nearly 9 billion metric tons in 2024. Chinese and Indian output continued to grow, and Indonesia set export records.

India is on track to burn twice as much coal as the U.S. and Europe put together – possibly within the year – while China has already surged ahead, consuming 30% more coal than every other nation combined.

Growing by almost 12% in 2024, India’s production is projected to climb to over 1 billion metric tons in 2025 – a harvest that would exceed America’s peak in 2008.

This week, Adani Power invested $2 billion in a 1,500 megawatt, ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plant in India’s state of Uttar Pradesh to supply one of the most densely populated regions in the world. 

© The Daily Caller