TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The COP26 climate summit in Glasgow ended with China and India backing away from a commitment to end coal-fired power, compromising a joint communique pushed for by most G20 countries.

The last-minute change in wording saw the joint pledge abandon a “phase-out” of coal for a “phase-down,” prompting criticism from other leaders and calls from the summit’s president for the two countries to explain themselves to the most climate-vulnerable nations.

A new report by Bloomberg reveals why, despite the two countries' pledges on sustainability, it remains unlikely they will give up on coal. No other countries have increased coal-based power plants over the past 10 years.

China and India make up 95% of all new additions to coal power capacity since 2011, the data reveals. Newly built plants usually run for a minimum of 30 years, meaning coal is likely to endure in the global energy mix as a wave of new facilities in China and India come online.

While the dirty fuel’s share of global power generation fell last year to 34%, in China, it accounted for about 62% of output and in India, 72%. Experts say it will be impossible to keep the global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius if China and India continue to run the majority of their energy grids on coal.