What you should know about this indicator
- Includes commercial solid fuels only, i.e. bituminous coal and anthracite (hard coal), and lignite and brown (sub-bituminous) coal, and other commercial solid fuels. Includes coal produced for Coal-to-Liquids and Coal-to-Gas transformations.
- The source states that, in places, gaps in the series were filled by linear interpolation between known values. In the coal series the earliest decades increase by a constant amount each year, which reflects such interpolation, so year-to-year variation in the early period should not be over-interpreted.
- According to the source, the statistics relate to Great Britain until 1882, the United Kingdom including all of Ireland from 1883 to 1920, and the present-day United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) afterwards.
Coal production per capita
Measured in kilowatt-hours per capita.
Source
Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2025); The Shift Data Portal (2019); Smil (2017); National Infrastructure Commission (2020); Population based on various sources (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
June 27, 2025
Next expected update
August 2026
Date range
1700–2024
Unit
kilowatt-hours
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Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
- The data is generated by combining the latest data from the Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy and The Shift Dataportal. The Energy Institute provides fossil fuel production data from 1965 onwards (and crude prices from 1861 onwards). The Shift Dataportal provides long-term data from 1900, but only extends to 2016. To maintain consistency with other energy data, we prioritize the Energy Institute data - meaning if they provide data for the given country and year, this data is used. Where data is not available from the Energy Institute for a given country, or pre-1965 we rely on data from The Shift Dataportal.
- To extend coal production before 1900, we additionally use two historical sources, each of which only fills years where neither the Energy Institute nor The Shift Dataportal report data. For the World, we use estimates from Vaclav Smil (2017), which cover coal from 1800. For the United Kingdom, we use the National Infrastructure Commission's historical energy dataset (compiled by Roger Fouquet), which covers coal production from 1700; we convert it from tonnes to terawatt-hours using the coal energy content given in the source's own units (about 6.84 megawatt-hours per tonne).
- We have converted primary production in exajoules to terawatt-hours using the conversion factor: 1,000,000 / 3,600 ~ 278.
- Production per capita has been calculated by dividing by our population dataset, based on different sources.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Coal production per capita”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) - “Energy”. Data adapted from Energy Institute, The Shift Data Portal, Smil, National Infrastructure Commission, Various sources. Retrieved from https://drop-yearisday.owid.pages.dev/grapher/coal-prod-per-capita [online resource]How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2025) and other sources – with major processing by Our World in DataFull citation
Energy Institute - Statistical Review of World Energy (2025); The Shift Data Portal (2019); Smil (2017); National Infrastructure Commission (2020); Population based on various sources (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Coal production per capita” [dataset]. Energy Institute, “Statistical Review of World Energy”; The Shift Data Portal, “Energy production from fossil fuels”; Smil, “Energy Transitions: Global and National Perspectives”; National Infrastructure Commission, “UK historical energy data”; Various sources, “Population” [original data]. Retrieved July 3, 2026 from https://drop-yearisday.owid.pages.dev/grapher/coal-prod-per-capitaDownload
Quick download
Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.
Data API
Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.
Data URL (CSV format)
https://drop-yearisday.owid.pages.dev/grapher/coal-prod-per-capita.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseMetadata URL (JSON format)
https://drop-yearisday.owid.pages.dev/grapher/coal-prod-per-capita.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseExcel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://drop-yearisday.owid.pages.dev/grapher/coal-prod-per-capita.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests
# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://drop-yearisday.owid.pages.dev/grapher/coal-prod-per-capita.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})
# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://drop-yearisday.owid.pages.dev/grapher/coal-prod-per-capita.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()R
library(jsonlite)
# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://drop-yearisday.owid.pages.dev/grapher/coal-prod-per-capita.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://drop-yearisday.owid.pages.dev/grapher/coal-prod-per-capita.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Stata
import delimited "https://drop-yearisday.owid.pages.dev/grapher/coal-prod-per-capita.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear