The simple fact of the matter is China burns nearly 2 BILLION metric tons of coal a year with no end in sight.
India burns another 400 Million tons a year and still growing,
When combined with the rest of Asia and Australia/New Zealand the major consumers include Japan and both Korea's bringing the total up to around 2.8 Billion tons annually.
IOW the dreamy proclamations that the days of major coal consumption are behind us forever are without basis in reality. Time to face reality folks, CO2 emissions are still growing year in and year out. Just because Fracking has given the USA an abundance of natural gas for the present and our internal coal consumption has dropped by about 30% from a decade ago does not mean the same thing is happening everywhere else, or that it even could.
On top of that, even if Asia were able to frack enough gas to cut their coal consumption by 30% what would that actually mean? The energy demand is still there and still being met, and because Natural Gas releases about half the CO2 of hard coal you are not cutting total emissions by 30%, at best you are cutting them by 15%. You are also adding the myriad of tiny leaks from hundreds of thousands of gas line connections. On top of that if the combustion efficiency of every flame is improbably maintained at 98% you are still releasing megatons of CH4 into the atmosphere, and it is a far more efficient greenhouse gas than CO2 as well.