South Korea will shut up to 15 coal-fired power plants for a period of three months starting December to curb air pollution, which impacted imports in November.

The government sources said the carbon price would now increase annually, hitting 55 euros in 2025.

Brent crude oil spot prices averaged $63 per barrel (b) in November, up $3/b from October. EIA forecasts Brent spot prices will average $61/b in 2020, down from a 2019 average of $64/b. EIA forecasts that West Texas Intermediate (WTI) prices will average $5.50/b less than Brent prices in 2020. EIA expects crude oil prices will be lower on average in 2020 than in 2019 because of forecast rising global oil inventories, particularly in the first half of next year.

In November, China imported 20.78 million mt of coal, up 8.5% year on year, the GAC data showed.

Renewable energy sources alone are not capable of fully decarbonising the economy, but they can complement nuclear energy in achieving this goal. The nuclear industry, led by World Nuclear Association, has set the Harmony goal for nuclear energy to provide 25% of global electricity by 2050. This will require trebling nuclear generation from its present level.

The market capitalization of five of the top 10 U.S. coal companies was sliced by more than half from early January to mid-November 2019.

The relaxing of curbs on coal power, combined with shrinking investment in solar and wind energy, have caused further alarm over carbon dioxide emissions in China.

In the first nine months of 2019, US thermal exports were more than 10 million mt below the year-ago period's total, and vessel tracking data show October exports are expected to come in close to September levels.

“Since coal is still a major resource, we will continue to rely on coal when we need it - and right now for instance, the economy is slowing and renewables are still relatively weak,” said Lin Boqiang, dean of the China Institute for Energy Policy Studies.

IEEFA forecasts India's cumulative renewable energy capacity to expand 17% year-on-year to 93.5GW by the end of 2019/20, adding a total of 13.5GW in 2019/20 (relative to just 5.7GW to-date).

US coal-fired power generation totaled 85.9 TWh in September, down 8.8% from August,

In the past three and a half decades, the analysis noted, only two other years had declines in coal generation - 2009 with a 148 TWh drop and 2015 with a 217 TWH drop.

The auctions, to be aimed at paring back India’s coal imports, are intended to attract global miners such as Glencore PLC, BHP Group, Anglo American PLC and Peabody Energy Corp.

China also has another 121.3 GW of coal-fired power plants under construction, U.S.-based research network Global Energy Monitor said in its report, nearly enough to power the whole of France.

China produced 3.06 billion tonnes of raw coal during the January-October period, up 4.5 percent year on year