Donate

← Maps

Subsurface

Coal mines

Operating, proposed and recently closed coal mines around the world, with their status, owners and output.

World map of coal mines as colored dots on pale land: red operating, blue proposed, grey shelved or mothballed, orange closed or cancelled

Map key

  • Red, operating
  • Blue, proposed
  • Grey, shelved or mothballed
  • Orange, closed or cancelled

Coal mines around the world by status, from the August 2026 release.

Map: Fix Planet, from Global Energy Monitor, Global Coal Mine Tracker, August 2026 release, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. Boundaries: Natural Earth, public domain.

Subsurface 2026 GEM

What it is

The Global Coal Mine Tracker, published by the research group Global Energy Monitor, catalogues coal mines around the world. Its public page counts about 7,000 mines in 70 countries and about 5,300 mine owners. In the 2025 mine-level records, coal production from operating mines reached about 9.1 billion tonnes. The August 2026 release is the second version of a dataset first released in May 2026, and the data are updated in the second quarter of each year.

Why it matters

Coal mines lock in decades of production. Global Energy Monitor counts 835 proposed coal mines under development, with a combined capacity of 2,521 million tonnes per year, about 11% more than in 2024. Of that capacity, 781 million tonnes per year is already under construction or in trial operation. Proposed mines alone could release 16.8 million tonnes of methane a year, on top of the carbon dioxide released when the coal is burned.

How to read it

Each dot is a mine, coloured by status: operating, proposed, shelved or mothballed, and closed or cancelled. It lists operating, inactive and proposed mines that can produce 1 million tonnes per year or more, plus mines closed since 2015; in China the threshold is 0.45 million tonnes per year. China, India, Australia, Russia and South Africa hold over 90% of proposed capacity, and China alone accounts for 1,321 million tonnes per year, more than the rest of the world combined. Thermal coal for power stations makes up around 70% of proposed capacity; most of the rest is coal for steelmaking.

Limits

Small mines appear only where the research team has had time to add them. Production figures are for saleable coal where possible, and where recent production is unknown the mine’s capacity is used instead. When a mine’s exact location is unknown, the dot sits at the closest approximate location. A proposed mine may never open.

Sources

License

Map: Fix Planet, from Global Energy Monitor, Global Coal Mine Tracker, August 2026 release, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. Boundaries: Natural Earth, public domain.

Open source map →