Middle East tensions locked oil and gas behind the Strait of Hormuz. Prices spiked. Governments scrambled. Headlines screamed coal’s revival. But data tells another story. Global fossil fuel power generation dropped in the war’s first month, per analysis from the Fortune . Gas output fell 4% year-on-year. Coal stayed flat worldwide—and excluding China, it plunged 3.5%. Solar jumped 14%. Wind climbed 8%. Lauri Myllyvirta, cofounder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), cut through the noise. “The government statements used to create a ‘back to coal’ narrative range from meaningless to inconsequential,” he wrote. “There has been no increase in coal capacity so far.” His team’s March report, detailed here , confirmed it: no new plants online, no retirements delayed enough to matter. Plants already hummed at full tilt. Short-term bumps happened. India and East Asia fired up existing coal to offset LNG shortages. Europe eyed stockpiles.…