Closer to 40% than 50% from the most recent numbers I've seen, and that's of volume shipped, not volume*distance (Australia to China / India being a relatively

Closer to 40% than 50% from the most recent numbers I've seen, and that's of volume shipped, not volume*distance (Australia to China / India being a relatively short route that carries quite a lot of the coal). That wouldn't disappear entirely if you electrified everything; coal is widely used for producing steel (1kg blast-furnace steel uses 750g met-grade coal, this is ~10% of imports in China) and preparing cement (producing 1kg cement uses 500g coal). However, mass electrification would still be a dramatic drop in shipping.