The Guardian Weekly

Hard to break the habit

Why China clings to coal,

By Vincent Ni

When he was a boy in the 1980s, Wang Xiaojun was taught to be proud of his home town of Lüliang in the north-western Chinese province of Shanxi. The province is China’s biggest coal-producing region, and Lüliang was a significant base for the army during the second world war.

Lüliang, a city of 3.4 million people, has had less to shout about in recent years. A series of corruption scandals in the city brought down several high profile officials shortly after President Xi Jinping came to power in 2013; there are concerns over the high number of babies born with congenital defects, blamed by experts on air pollution; and, last week, a huge flood forced coal mines to close just as China scrambles to tackle its energy crunch.

Coal is China’s main source of power generation, but Xi has vowed to change that. The country has been the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions for more than a decade now. A year ago, Xi pledged emissions would peak by 2030, and carbon neutrality would be achieved by 2060. Last month, he announced China would stop building new coal-fired projects overseas in a move that analysts say could be pivotal in tackling global emissions.

Ending a dependency on coal at home has proved trickier. Shortly after he took office, Xi began to plan on low-carbon and sustainable development of “resource-based cities”. But since September China has been experiencing its own coal

dilemma, with power shortages spread across key regions, causing a ripple effect to the global economy. Officials ordered more than 70 mines in Inner Mongolia to increase coal production by almost 100m tonnes this month. And on 29 September Shanxi promised to supply coal to 14 other regions to ensure sufficient energy through this winter.

Outside China, there is a fear that Beijing may be rethinking its promises on decarbonisation. That mood darkened last week, when it emerged that Xi would not be attending Cop26 in person. But some veteran China analysts argue that Beijing’s recent approach merely reflects the messy reality of the country’s energy transition. To residents in Shanxi, the reliance on dirty coal is a vicious circle that the province of 37 million people can not easily pull itself out of, despite the promises from central government. “It is not about whether China can be less reliant on coal eventually, it is rather about what will happen to a province like ours afterwards,” said Wang, who now works as a climate campaigner.

“As an activist, of course I’d like to see my home town move away from coal … But I also worry what will happen to a province whose economy overwhelmingly depends on coal and heavy industries, and the millions of people whose livelihoods are reliant on them.”

Until the 1980s, most of the boys in the region would grow up to become farmers. Then coal became a valuable commodity as China began to expand its economy. But a few years ago, as coal depleted, many villages collapsed and people died.

Growing up with coal miners, Wang saw how dangerous mines could be. Seven years ago, when working in a coal mine, Wang’s 38-year-old cousin, Wang Xiaobing, was injured in an accident and sent home. But, with a family to support and lacking the skills to switch career, Xiaobing went back to his former mine as a driver. Shortly after, he developed lung and liver illness and died two years ago.

“You see, the addiction to coal is not just on a national level, but also on a personal level. It’s not easy to move away from,” Wang said. “A lot of people here, including another relative of mine, are unhappy with [media] talk of climate change and [the government’s] effort to reduce coal consumption. To us, this is bread and butter. Without it, what would Lüliang look like?”

Stories like this have been commonplace across China’s coal regions in the past two decades. Between 2000 and 2010, on average 4,870 people died in mine accidents every year. In the US, the figure was only 33. The figure began to decrease dramatically in the last decade as the government imposed strict safety rules and nationalised many mines.

Han Jinsong (not his real name), a 50-year-old former coal miner in the city of Fengyang, said that while also working as a miner, his elder brother was hit by a mine car and stayed in hospital for about six months. “He became disabled and the coal mine he worked at compensated for once,” he said. “That’s it.” Han added: “Despite all these tragedies, it’s unrealistic for China to move away from coal. You’ve seen the recent power shortages spread across the country. Now the government has to reopen coal mines to meet the accelerating demand. It’s always going to be a dilemma.”

It’s a reality that senior officials have openly admitted. “China’s energy structure is dominated by coal power. This is an objective reality,” said Su Wei, deputy secretary general of the National Development and Reform Commission in Beijing, in April. “We have no other choice. For a period of time, we may need to use coal power as a point of flexible adjustment.”

Judith Audin, a French sociologist who writes about the coal industry in Shanxi province, said: “The rise and fall of Lüliang – as well as other coal-heavy cities – is also the story of China’s changing economic and social structure.” In 2010 Lüliang’s GDP growth was at a staggering 21%. In 2020, it was only 2.7%.

Local officials have been talking about transition for a long time. When Lüliang’s economy was booming, billions were poured into road construction and apartment buildings. But by 2015, coal consumption had decreased, the local economy crashed, and the mayor was sacked for corruption.

“Across Shanxi, there have been other experiments in recent years, too,” said Audin. In Datong, China’s “coal capital”, the coal mining land is now covered in solar panels and wind turbines.

“But even if these efforts were eventually successful, to what extent will these new energy businesses absorb the excess labour left by coal mining?” Audin said. “And how would the authorities deal with the generations of coal miners and their families who’ve helped power China but who have no other skills in the new economy?”

The Big Story | China

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2021-10-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

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