Global Energy Monitor: The Trackers, the Coal Plant Pipeline, and How to Use GEM Data

Global Energy Monitor’s data turns up in IPCC and IEA reports, in bank coal policies and in news stories about new coal plants. This page explains who GEM is, lists all 25 of its trackers, and lets you look up any country in its Global Coal Plant Tracker: how much coal power runs there, how much is planned, what was built and retired each year, and who owns the most. It then checks GEM’s US figures against the US government’s, and shows how to cite and reuse the data.

1. What Global Energy Monitor is

Global Energy Monitor (GEM) is a non-profit research organisation that builds open databases of fossil fuel and clean energy projects, one plant, mine or pipeline at a time. Its About page says the work began in 2007, when a group of journalists and advocates started documenting proposals for new US coal plants. In 2008 the project, then called CoalSwarm, became affiliated with Earth Island Institute; it became an independent non-profit as Global Energy Monitor in 2017. Wikipedia names Ted Nace as its founder.

2. All 25 GEM trackers

Each tracker is a separate database with its own release schedule and its own lower size limit. Release dates are the latest named on each tracker’s page when we read them on 1 November 2026.

3. Coal power in a country

Pick a country to see its coal fleet in the Global Coal Plant Tracker’s July 2026 release: capacity running now, capacity at each stage of development, what was built and retired each year since 2000, and the retirements its owners or government have announced. Capacity is the units’ rated output in megawatts (MW) or gigawatts (GW, 1,000 MW).

4. The world’s coal pipeline

In the July 2026 release, 2,226 GW of coal power is operating in 74 countries, across 6,591 units. GEM estimates those units emit about 10.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ a year. Another 763 GW is in development: 260 GW under construction and 503 GW announced, seeking permits or permitted. China has 78% of the capacity under construction.

Most proposals never get built. Since 2010, 1,817 GW of proposed coal power has been cancelled, more than twice the capacity in development today, and 106 GW is shelved. 537 GW has retired since 2000. The chart shows how the yearly additions compare with retirements.

The 20 countries with the most coal power are below; open the box under the table for the rest.

“In development” adds up announced, pre-permit, permitted and under-construction capacity. Source: Global Coal Plant Tracker, Global Energy Monitor, July 2026 release (CC BY 4.0).

5. What GEM’s statuses mean

Every unit in the Coal Plant Tracker has one status. The definitions, from GEM’s tracker page, decide what counts as “planned” or “in development” in news stories, so they are worth knowing before you quote a figure.

“In development” on this page, as in GEM’s own summaries, adds up the first four: announced, pre-permit, permitted and under construction.

6. How GEM builds its data

• Unit by unit, from documents. Researchers record each unit from company filings, government permits, news and earlier databases. The Coal Plant Tracker lists sources including the Global Energy Observatory, CARMA, BankTrack, a 2012 World Resources Institute survey and S&P Global’s World Electric Power Plants database.
• A wiki page for every plant. Each plant has a page on GEM.wiki with footnotes to the documents behind its status, so you can check a single entry yourself.
• A size floor. The coal tracker only includes units of 30 MW or more, so small industrial boilers and some captive plants are not in it.
• CO₂ is estimated, not measured. GEM works out each unit’s annual CO₂ from its capacity, the emission factor of its coal type, its heat rate and a capacity factor. Treat the CO₂ figures as estimates for comparison, not as a plant’s reported emissions.
• Twice-yearly releases. The Coal Plant Tracker is updated in January and July. Statuses can change between releases, so cite the release you used.

7. GEM vs the US government’s count

For the United States we can test GEM against an official count. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) counts utility-scale power plants, those of 1 MW or more. The two agree closely on capacity and differ on the number of plants, for reasons that show up in the definitions.

Three things explain the gap in plant and unit counts: GEM leaves out units under 30 MW, which EIA counts; the two counts date from different months, so a unit retired in between appears in one and not the other; and the two group generators into plants in their own ways. GEM shows no new US coal capacity since 2015, and 98 GW of today’s US fleet has an announced retirement date by 2040.

8. Who owns the most coal power

GEM records the owners of each unit and traces them up to the parent company. These two tables use GEM’s ownership summary: the parents with the most operating coal power, and those with the most in development. Chinese power groups lead both lists; India’s Adani Power and NTPC are second and third for capacity in development.

GEM assigns each unit’s capacity to its owners by their share, and names the parent company at the top of each chain. Source: Global Coal Plant Tracker ownership summary, Global Energy Monitor, July 2026 release (CC BY 4.0).

9. Using GEM data: licence, citation, downloads

GEM’s tracker download pages say: “All Global Energy Monitor tracker data are freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License unless otherwise noted.” CC BY 4.0 lets you share and adapt the data, for any purpose, if you credit GEM, link the licence and say what you changed. Two cautions:

• “Unless otherwise noted” is real. Some data GEM shows comes from partners under other terms; methane plume data from Carbon Mapper, for example, is CC BY-NC-SA, which rules out commercial use. GEM’s download pages also offer a form to request a commercial exemption. Read the licence note in the file you download, and ask GEM if your use is commercial and you are unsure.
• Attribution comes with the file. GEM says “necessary attribution elements are included in our data download files”. Use them, and name the release.

We checked our own use with GEM. On 1 November 2026 we asked whether showing the coal tracker’s summary figures, and a CSV of them, on this site, which carries advertising, needed the commercial exemption or was covered by CC BY 4.0. GEM replied the same day that it was no problem. That answer is about our use only; if yours is commercial, ask GEM about it.

GEM’s suggested citation for the coal tracker is:

Global Coal Plant Tracker, Global Energy Monitor, July 2026 release.

• Full unit-level files: fill in the short request form on each tracker’s download page.
• Summary tables: linked from each tracker page, no form needed. Our CSVs below are built from them.
• One plant: search GEM.wiki for the plant’s page and its sources. Note the wiki’s own licence differs: its pages are CC BY-NC-SA (no commercial use) unless noted.

Typical uses: building or checking a coal exclusion list, screening the companies in a loan or bond portfolio before working out financed emissions under PCAF (see the PCAF project finance calculator), and country context in climate risk work. GEM’s CO₂ estimates are not a substitute for a company’s own reported emissions.

10. GEM vs Climate TRACE

The two are often confused, and they work together. GEM records what exists and what is planned: each plant’s capacity, status and owners, from documents. Climate TRACE estimates what each site emits, month by month, using satellite data and models. Climate TRACE uses GEM’s company identifiers in its ownership data (India’s NTPC is E100000001926 in both), so the two can be joined.

For electricity generation and power-sector emissions by country and fuel, see Ember’s yearly electricity data.

11. How we built this page

• Coal figures come from the public summary tables of the Global Coal Plant Tracker, July 2026 release, linked from GEM’s tracker page: capacity, units and power stations by status and country, annual CO₂, capacity newly operating and retired by year, announced retirements by year, and the ownership summary. When GEM publishes a new release, the data on this page is rebuilt.
• Checks: the country rows add up to GEM’s world totals for every status; parent companies’ operating capacity adds up to the world total, so no capacity is counted twice.
• “In development” is announced + pre-permit + permitted + under construction. “Built” in the chart is capacity GEM records as newly operating in that year; the last bar is the first half of 2026.
• Trackers table: each tracker’s own page, read 1 November 2026. US cross-check: EIA’s FAQ “How many power plants are in the United States?”.
• What we did not do: we did not change any GEM figure or check single plants against company reports.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and downloads

• Global Energy Monitor, About and Global Coal Plant Tracker (methodology, statuses and summary tables, July 2026 release), read 1 November 2026; the other 24 tracker pages linked in section 2.
• Global Energy Monitor, Global Integrated Power Tracker download page (licence wording and commercial exemption form), Global Methane Emitters Tracker download page (Carbon Mapper plume data, CC BY-NC-SA) and Global Solar Power Tracker (attribution wording).
• GEM.wiki (content licence CC BY-NC-SA unless noted).
• US Energy Information Administration, How many power plants are in the United States? (data as of March 2026).
• Wikipedia, Global Energy Monitor (founder, data users).

Download the coal figures on this page as CSV, free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with credit to Global Energy Monitor (cite: Global Coal Plant Tracker, Global Energy Monitor, July 2026 release). For unit-level data, use GEM’s download form.

• gem-coal-countries.csv: coal capacity by status, operating units and power stations, and annual CO₂, by country (Global Coal Plant Tracker, Global Energy Monitor, July 2026 release)
• gem-coal-new-retired-by-year.csv: capacity newly operating and retired each year since 2000, by country
• gem-coal-planned-retirements.csv: announced retirement capacity by year, by country

Related: Climate TRACE · Ember yearly electricity data · EPA eGRID · Coal combustion emissions.

What changed in this revision

Version 1.0 (1 November 2026): First publication.