COP31 Hosts Coal Expansion: Türkiye and Australia Face a Credibility Test

COP31 hosts coal expansion is the charge levelled at Türkiye and Australia in the Global Coal Exit List 2026, released by the German nonprofit Urgewald on 20 October 2026, weeks before the two countries co-host the COP31 climate talks in Antalya (BankTrack). Türkiye hosts the summit, which runs in November, while Australia leads the negotiations (Eco-Business).

Urgewald’s argument is not that the two hosts are the world’s biggest coal expanders. They are not — China and India dominate the pipeline. The argument is about credibility: can countries still opening coal projects credibly chair talks meant to close the coal era?

Information verified through 29 October 2026.

Global Coal Exit List 2026: new coal projects outnumber cancelled three to one

Start with the global picture in the Global Coal Exit List 2026. The database covers more than 1,500 parent companies and 1,150 subsidiaries across the thermal coal value chain, and 717 financial institutions use it to monitor and restrict coal financing (BankTrack). In the past year, 257 new coal projects were announced while 76 planned projects were shelved or cancelled in 2025 (Coal Zoom).

“For every shelved project, three new projects were announced,” said Pacôme David-Mauduit, a senior researcher at Urgewald, warning that the pipeline of new coal mining, power, chemicals and infrastructure assets has grown to 1,510 projects, with over 40% of listed companies developing new thermal coal assets (BankTrack).

The power numbers are stark. Some 335 developers are planning 606 new coal-fired power projects with combined capacity over 740 GW — about four times the size of the current US coal plant fleet — and Chinese companies account for 70% of that pipeline, Indian companies for 18%, with the remaining 12% spread over 33 countries, including Türkiye (Coal Zoom). On mining, 357 developers plan projects totalling at least 3,271 million tonnes a year, equal to 41% of current world thermal coal production (BankTrack).

Phase-out plans remain rare. Of more than 2,700 companies on the list, only 142 have set phase-out dates for all their coal assets, five companies dropped their plans this year, and only 17 actually phased out and left the list (BankTrack).

COP31 hosts coal expansion in Türkiye: electrification at the podium, coal at home

Türkiye’s position is the sharper contradiction because its environment minister, Murat Kurum, is COP31 president-designate — and, Eco-Business reported, he did not specify transitioning away from fossil fuels as a key item in his action agenda, while presenting electrification, waste, cities, food, oceans and climate finance as priorities (Eco-Business). The presidency’s plan sets a voluntary target of lifting electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35% by 2035, with no explicit pledge to phase fossil fuels out or down (Eco-Business).

At home, coal supplied 34% of Türkiye’s electricity in 2025, against 22% from wind and solar combined, and the government provides more than €2.4 billion a year in coal subsidies (BankTrack). “Electrification without phasing out coal is like showering with polluted water,” said Urgewald director Heffa Schücking (Eco-Business).

Two projects carry the argument. The government remains set on expanding the Afşin-Elbistan power station, and Kurum’s ministry is appealing a court ruling that overturned the environmental impact assessment for new units there (BankTrack). In June 2026, Cenal Elektrik, a Cengiz Holding subsidiary, proposed a new 1,050 MW unit at its Çanakkale plant — a plan local campaigner Süheyla Doğan said the community would fight, citing air, coastal water and farmland pollution (Coal Zoom).

Australia coal mine expansion COP31 negotiators cannot wave away

The Australia coal mine expansion COP31 delegates will be asked about is a pipeline, not a single plant. Australia has the world’s third-largest pipeline of thermal coal mining projects — 49 proposed mines or extensions, 20 of them greenfield — and is the world’s second-largest coal exporter (Eco-Business).

One project shows the stakes. The Hunter Valley Operations Continuation Project, a Yancoal Australia–Glencore joint venture, received New South Wales approval on 30 September 2026; it would extend two open-cut mines to as late as 2045 and extract about 429 million tonnes of coal, with federal approval still required (BankTrack).

There is a counterweight in the courts. On 7 October 2026, Australia’s High Court found the permit for extending the Mount Pleasant mine to 2048 invalid because authorities had failed to count the mine’s Scope 3 emissions — the emissions from burning the coal overseas — when approving it (BankTrack). Even so, Australia signed a fossil-fuel transition roadmap declaration at COP30 yet remains one of the few OECD countries with no coal phase-out date (Eco-Business).

Host scrutiny is not new. Eco-Business noted that Brazil faced criticism at COP30 for approving Amazon-coast oil exploration, Azerbaijan at COP29 over gas expansion, and the UAE at COP28 over its oil and gas plans (Eco-Business). What is new here is the timing of the data: a named database, published three weeks before the summit, with project-by-project detail.

Analysis: Urgewald is an advocacy group, and its list should be read as an advocate’s evidence, not a neutral registry — governments in Ankara and Canberra were not quoted in the reports read for this article. The underlying facts it cites, though, are checkable and specific: subsidy totals, court appeals, a state approval dated 30 September, a High Court judgment dated 7 October. Schücking’s test is the one delegates will apply in Antalya anyway: “The real proof of Australia’s climate leadership is not in its speeches at COP31, but in its actions at home” (Eco-Business). At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, countries agreed to accelerate the phasedown of unabated coal power (Eco-Business). Five years on, the hosts arrive with expansion files still open.

Sources

1. https://www.eco-business.com/news/cop31-hosts-turkiye-and-australia-pursue-coal-expansion-ahead-of-climate-talks-say-environmental-advocates/
2. https://www.banktrack.org/article/the_global_coal_exit_list_2026_plans_for_new_coal_projects_outpace_cancellations
3. http://www.coalzoom.com/article.cfm?articleid=44960