[brabel]

You are correct, parent commenter misunderstood the table they are referring to.

That table says there's slightly more kWh generated from natural gas (1,246,847) than from coal (1,124,638). I assumed they read this wrongly and thought this was CO2 emissions per kWh.

The best number to read from that table is the last column, "CO2 emissions - pounds per kWh":

Natural Gas: 0.92

Coal: 2.21

So yeah, natural gas's CO2 emissions are much lower.

[tialaramex]

https://www.electricitymap.org/map illustrates this for the world, it offers estimates for types of electricity generation in each country and where a country or region offers real-ish time data on power generation it reflects that.

Countries/ regions that show dark brown are mostly relying heavily on coal. Getting on for 1 gram per watt-hour of CO2, which is ludicrous.

In a few cases they've managed to find something even less environmentally responsible to burn than coal, such as oil or the most pants-on-head crazy electrical generation method - peat†, which unless somebody starts a national project of shooting endangered animals and then burning the corpses as fuel ought to stand as the least responsible way to make power.

† In theory burning wood could be sustainable because you really could grow enough wood quickly enough to power a not insubstantial electricity plant forever. You probably shouldn't but you could. Peat does not form quickly enough for that to ever be practical.