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Strengthening national coal transitions to raise climate ambition

The issue of coal transitions is coming into focus in both national and international climate policy discussions. There are several drivers of this. At one level, the Paris Agreement marked a significant shift in the pace, scope and ambition of global climate change mitigation action. Consequently, it is now clear that coal will need to play a more and more diminished role in the global energy mix in the coming decades, despite carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. It is also increasingly clear that non-climate policy-related factors, such as rapid declines in the cost of renewable energy and battery storage, will continue to challenge the previously strong role of steam coal in the global energy mix (Randall, 2015). The business-as-usual scenario is therefore evolving quickly and the downside risks to coal demand appear to be increasing.