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LINFEN, China — Desperate to meet its electricity needs, China is starting new coal production, which in one year exceeds all of Western Europe’s mines, at an enormous cost to global efforts to combat climate change.
The campaign started a stir in the coal country of China. Idle mines start again. Hut-sized yellow backhoes clear and widen roads through terraced cornfields. Long columns of bright red freight trucks converge in the area to carry the extra cargo.
China’s pressure will come at a high cost. Burning coal, already the biggest cause of human-induced climate change in the world, will increase China’s emissions and toxic air pollution. It will endanger the lives of coal miners. Even while helping short-term growth, it can impose a long-term cost on the Chinese economy.
World leaders are meeting in Glasgow next week to discuss ways to stop climate change. But Jan Ivar Korsbakken, senior researcher at the International Center for Climate and Environmental Studies in Oslo, said China’s extra coal alone would increase humanity’s production of planet-warming carbon dioxide by a full percentage point.
“The timing just before the climate summit is terrible,” he said. “Hopefully this is a temporary measure to alleviate the current energy crisis.”
Beijing’s leaders are determined to provide ample coal to power China’s factories and heat their homes this winter. Common power outagesPartly due to coal shortages, it nearly paralyzed many industrial cities three weeks ago.
China is expanding its mines to produce 220 million mt of extra coal per year, up about 6 percent from last year. China already extracts and burns more coal than the rest of the world combined.
The effort is infused with patriotism. “Guarantee of supply” has become a national slogan and is now frequently featured in state media and official statements, and even on red banners in front of coal trucks.
If the campaign is successful, China will generate enough electricity not only for its own people, but also for hundreds of global companies that manufacture everything from consumer electronics to car parts in China. Business leaders say power outages have drastically reduced over the past few days. Coal shipments have increased, utilities are generating more power, power-hungry steel mills have cut production, and mild weather is limiting residential use.
The potential costs go beyond global warming emissions.
Rapid expansion means extra risks for the country’s 2.6 million coal miners. China’s National Mine Safety Administration said on October 21 that 18 workers had died in 10 accidents, mostly in coal mines, in the previous four weeks.
Management said some mining companies still suffer from “poor security development concepts, inadequate learning from accidents, inadequate research and management of potential security risks, and poor fundamental security management.”
made in china big steps Towards cleaner air over the last decade, but the use of extra coal may threaten some of this progress. As recently as 2015, air pollution 1.6 million premature deaths per year. The Chinese government warned on Monday that air pollution in major cities has increased in recent days, but did not give a reason.
The heart of the industry is Appalachia, Shanxi Province, China, 300 miles southwest of Beijing. It is a region of steep, often terraced hills and valleys where coal has been mined for 2100 years.
The state mined nearly one billion metric tons of coal last year. This was only a quarter of China’s total production, but still twice as much as the US or Australia.
As in the United States and elsewhere, residents of coal mining areas in China often support the industry and welcome the extra output.
“Working is very important to me to make a living,” said Wan Husheng, a semi-retired coal worker in the village of Nanyaotou, near the end of a long, narrow valley where small flocks of sheep graze on fields that have turned brown and withered in autumn. “Coal is very important”
Truck drivers gathered in Shanxi as mines increase production and utilities try to restock.
Cong Yanping arrived in his red pickup truck from coastal Shandong Province, expecting a leisurely three-day trip home with a full cargo. “Most of the time, I usually live in the truck,” he said. “I’m getting the orders I’ve received.”
Environmental and safety decisions have played a key role in recent power outages.
China has closed 5,500 coal mines in the last five years, half of the country’s total. Rusting piles of abandoned mines now trash mountain valleys in western Shanxi, long diagonals of conveyor belts sitting quietly in the wind and rain.
Older, smaller, more polluting and more dangerous mines, mostly privately owned, were closed. State-owned enterprises were allowed to build or expand more modern mines, but this had less overall capacity than the mines that were shut down.
Then, on March 1, strict new laws came into effect. Mine managers who extracted more coal than their government-approved capacity faced potentially long prison terms.
Many privately owned mines had previously produced excess coal to make extra profits. They often filled more miners in underground coal seams than safety regulations allowed.
State-owned enterprises that currently dominate Chinese coal mining have long been wary of overproduction. Since March, they have become even more timid.
“Now that this is a criminal complaint, there is no incentive for an executive in a state-owned enterprise to commit this crime, in particular,” said Kevin Tu, Beijing energy consultant and former China program manager for the International Energy Agency in Paris.
The closure of small mines and a national security campaign have made coal mining much less dangerous. China lost 1,973 miners by 2011. Last year, the death toll was 228.
The mine safety agency authorized the expansion of only 153 large, mostly state-owned mines in the coming months. Numerous small mines remained closed in west-central or southwestern Shanxi last week.
“Small coal mines have been shut down,” said Qi Zhiping, a 68-year-old maintenance worker at the Longze coal processing plant who has been quiet for the past few years. “State-owned coal mines have standards.”
Until September, coal shortages were not China’s only electricity problem. Lack of rain in southwestern China meant hydroelectric dams produced less power. Calm skies in northeast China meant that wind turbines also contributed less.
Coal prices have almost doubled. The utilities, which were prevented from raising prices, started to run the power plants less. There were outages as factories in China ran out to meet strong demand. Heavy rains and flooding in Shanxi in early October briefly delayed China’s initial ability to extract extra coal. All but four of the mines have been reopened, the Shanxi government said on Thursday.
Authorities responded by partially deregulating electricity tariffs. Depending on the state, energy-intensive industries such as steel or chemical production now face cost increases of up to 50 percent. Yan Qin, principal analyst at Refinitiv, a data provider, said this could encourage them to adopt energy efficiency.
Coal mine expansions often take decades to cover their investment costs. But the country’s state-controlled utility sector has pledged not to build any more coal-fired power plants after 2025.
Xi Jinping, China’s greatest leader, committed himself last year The country’s greenhouse gas emissions will peak by 2030, he said.
China has released a few details on how it will achieve this goal. Jin Liqun, a former deputy finance minister who is now chairman of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in Beijing, said in an interview that the increase in coal mining is only a temporary response to China’s once-rapid curbing of fossils. fuels.
“Coal production at this stage is a correction of an overshoot,” he said. “It’s not a long-term trend.”
For now, coal miners in Shanxi say the sound of working mines means more money for them and their communities.
“Workers are digging black gold,” said Liang Lijian, a coal washing worker at the Huipodi coal complex in Liujiayuan, southwest of Shanxi. “As soon as the machine starts, tens of thousands of taels of gold are made.”
joyful contributed to research.
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