By Chris Deaton

May 16, 2016 - The U.S. government is forecasting that the world's coal consumption will increase almost 15 percent in the coming decades, despite new regulations that will slow the industry significantly stateside.

The new estimate from the Energy Information Administration assumes that the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan (CPP) takes effect. The Supreme Court stayed implementation of the new regulatory plan this February, pending judicial review. Absent the CPP, coal use would grow by nearly 18 percent across the globe.

Scientific American has more:

While considerably diminished from a decade ago, coal-fired power generation is expected to grow by 0.6 percent annually over the coming years and will account for between 28 and 29 percent of global power generation by 2040, compared to 40 percent in 2012.

Natural gas and renewables, including hydropower, are also expected to claim between 28 and 29 percent of total global power generation by 2040, with the remainder coming from existing and new nuclear plants.

"This is going to happen in many places around the world, and it will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by a significant amount," [EIA Administrator Adam] Sieminski told energy policy experts and journalists gathered at CSIS's granite-and-glass headquarters on Rhode Island Avenue.

In one of the first high-level analyses of how U.S. carbon regulation will affect global energy markets, EIA projects that U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan would further shave coal consumption by roughly 1 percent after 2020 while driving a comparable increase in renewable energy deployment.

"It changes the global numbers a little bit, it changes the U.S. numbers more, and it particularly changes coal in the U.S. by more," Sieminski said. "You can see coal plateauing." 

Please click here for the government's report.