In short
Rubbish Talk rates Forbes' claim that "global coal use hit a record in 2025, even as coal power declined" a 2/10 because both halves of the headline are directly verifiable in the Energy Institute's Statistical Review of World Energy, and the "even as" framing accurately signals a real, explained divergence rather than manufacturing a false contradiction.
The Verdict
Lightly altered, and about as clean as a headline gets. This is one of the rare cases where the headline itself does the nuance-carrying work most outlets bury in paragraph nine: it states the record and the power-sector decline in the same breath, rather than picking the flattering or scary half alone. The only "iteration" from pure base fact is the word "even," which implies mild surprise, but the article immediately resolves that surprise with a clear mechanism (industrial versus power-sector demand), so the framing earns its emphasis rather than exploiting it.
What actually happened
The Energy Institute's Statistical Review of World Energy shows global coal consumption reached a record 166.0 exajoules in 2025, a 0.7% rise from 2024, while coal-fired electricity generation fell 0.3% to 10,511 terawatt-hours over the same period. The divergence stems from coal's non-power uses, steelmaking, cement, and other industrial demand, which pushed total consumption up even as power-sector burn declined.
Key facts
- Global coal consumption: 166.0 EJ in 2025, up 0.7% from 2024's 165 EJ (confirmed by the 2026 Statistical Review, which puts the rise at 0.68 EJ).
- Coal-fired power generation: fell 0.3% to 10,511 TWh globally in 2025.
- Coal's share of total energy supply actually slipped, from 27.9% in 2024 to 27.7% in 2025, as total energy supply grew faster (592.2 to 600.3 EJ, +1.4%).
- China consumed 92.2 EJ (55.6% of world total); Asia Pacific as a whole consumed 138.1 EJ, or 83.2% of global coal.
- US coal consumption jumped 10.4% and coal power +13.1%, the standout exception to a broader OECD decline of 4.8% a year over the past decade.
What to watch for
Next year's revision will show whether the US coal rebound was a one-off (gas price spike, grid reliability concerns) or a genuine reversal. Watch whether China's falling coal imports alongside flat consumption (domestic output up 1.7%) continues, since that reshapes the global trade figures more than the demand figures. Also watch how other outlets covering the same Statistical Review handle the consumption-versus-power split, since flattening it into a single "coal is booming" or "coal is dying" line is where spin usually creeps in.
