Largest Coal Producers in the World (1900–2024)

In 1900, the United States and Britain mined nearly two-thirds of the world's coal. By 2024, China alone mines more than half of it. This bar chart race follows the world's top coal-producing countries year by year, from 1900 to 2024: the peak of British coal, two world wars, Stalin's Five-Year Plans, the collapse of the Soviet Union, China's rise, and the new Asian giants, India and Indonesia. 📊 Data & method • Source: Our World in Data, energy dataset (Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy; The Shift Project for early years): https://github.com/owid/energy-data • Unit: tonnes of coal equivalent (1 tce = 29.3 GJ). Production is measured by energy content, so lignite counts for less than hard coal, and figures are lower than the raw tonnages often quoted. • Countries are shown within today's borders going back in time. The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia appear until they dissolve, followed by their successor states. • The data is annual. The months on screen are interpolated between yearly values for smooth motion. • 1980 values are the average of 1979 and 1981, where two source series join. A handful of obvious single-year errors in the source are smoothed the same way. 🖼 Image credits (Wikimedia Commons unless noted) 1942: Unknown · CC BY-SA 3.0 de · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bu... 1945: Kolbe · CC BY-SA 3.0 de · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bu... 1981: Horst Vogel · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sa... 1984: Virgil Lucky · CC BY-SA 4.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TH... 1989: Rob Loftis retouched by Dave606 at en.wikipedia · CC BY 3.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Co... 1992: FAndrey · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mi... 1998: Peabody Energy, Inc. · CC BY 3.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Co... 2003: Shubert Ciencia · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Po... 2010: consigliere ivan from Bontang, Indonesia · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ta... 2015: derek dye · CC BY-SA 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Th... 2016: Peter Van den Bossche from Mechelen, Belgium · CC BY-SA 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ch... 2020: Alan Stark · CC BY-SA 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Na... 2021: Herry Lawford from London, UK · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Co... 2024: Consigliere Ivan from Bontang, Indonesia · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Co... 1900, 1906, 1910, 1913, 1914, 1920, 1926, 1929, 1933, 1952, 1958, 1973, 1995, 2023: public domain 1939, 1949, 1961, 1964, 1971: AI-generated illustrations (not historical photographs) #barchartrace #coal #datavisualization