South Korea’s coal consumption increased last year, bucking the global trend for reducing carbon emissions, a report showed.

South Korea consumed 88.2 million tons of oil equivalent, a unit of energy, in 2018, up 2.4 percent from a year ago, according to the London-based energy company BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2019.

The latest figure makes South Korea the world’s fifth-largest coal consumer, following China, India, the United States and Japan, BP said. (Yonhap)