Price of coal to drift gradually lower

It is often taken as given that demand for coal will continue to rise inexorably as developing countries use it to power their growing economies. However, coal’s poor environmental credentials are leading many developed economies, and some emerging ones, to try to phase it out in favour of more environmentally-friendly gas and renewable sources.

As a result, we expect coal prices to trend lower over the next couple of years. Also in this issue, we address the question of whether increased US energy exports could help reduce the EU’s dependency on Russian supply, and the role of unplanned outages in keeping oil prices high.