You should read the (excellently named) No Country for Coal Gen report, which argued in detail that closing coal power plants was the economicly efficient thing to do but that various regulations meant they'd stay open long after they became net negatives costing tens of billions.

https://carbontracker.org/reports/no-country-for-coal-gen-be...

Population and per capita consumption have both increased for more than a century so the long term data is hard on the side of "demand relentlessly increases" (for major mineral demands and for energy supplies).

The logic here behind this ruling is that within the global thermal coal market it appears that demand is levelling and peaking, coal is on the nose, and thermal coal demand will start to fall within the decade.

That's based up such things as (say) the Standard & Poor (of SP100 fame) 2022 global coal forecast report.