The Billionaire Mining Magnate Who Bet Coal Had a Future, and Won Big

Coal's resurgence as a reliable energy source propelled Low Tuck Kwong to a spot on Forbes's 100 richest people

- Jon Emont

Deep in Indonesian Borneo, workers laid asphalt on a new 60-mile road being built to transport coal from mines that have never been busier.

At one end of the road, crews built a 40-foot-high conveyor belt that whisks the coal over swampland to a new jetty on the Mahakam River.

From there, the coal is funneled onto barges and floated downstream to a private port on the Pacific Ocean.

Giant loading machines fill equally massive ships headed for China, India, and the Philippines.

Coal, the world's dirtiest fossil fuel, is booming, and few are profiting more than Low Tuck Kwong, the 76-year-old businessman behind one of Asia's largest coal-mining complexes.

Coal's resurgence as a cheap and reliable energy source propelled him to a spot on Forbes's 100 richest people.

Low's wealth is estimated to have swelled to $28 billion from $1 billion in the years since coal was assumed to be headed for the slag heap.

Some experts had concluded that coal consumption peaked in 2013 at 8 billion metric tons.

It has since surpassed that level three years in a row.

Indonesia, the world's largest coal exporter, is shipping more of it than any nation in history.

In December, the International Energy Agency abandoned projections that coal use would drop in coming years, saying that it will increase through at least 2027 to nearly 9 billion tons.

Western nations have turned away from coal, but emerging economies are taking up the slack, as more nations seek to industrialize, modernize, and pull their people out of poverty.

A swath of Asia that spans Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines to India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan—together home to 30% of humanity—has increased the share of its power supply that comes from coal.

By comparison, the U.K., where coal helped fuel the industrial revolution two centuries ago, shut down its last coal-powered plant in September.