Despite climate change vow, China digging for more coal
AMERICA’S uncertain stance toward global warming under the coming administration of Donald Trump has given China a leading role in the fight against climate change. It has called on the United States to recognise established science and to work with other countries to reduce dependence on dirty fuels like coal and oil.
But there is a problem: Even as it does so, China is scrambling to mine and burn more coal.
A lack of stockpiles and worries about electricity blackouts are spurring Chinese officials to reverse curbs that once helped reduce coal production. Mines are reopening. Miners are being lured back with larger paychecks.
China’s response to coal scarcity shows how hard it will be to wean the country off coal. That makes it harder for China and the world to meet emissions targets, as Chinese coal is the world’s largest single source of carbon emissions from human activities.
Among China watchers, the turnabout also has contributed to questions about the fate of China’s current crop of economic planners.
Here in Jincheng, a smoggy city in China’s coal country, the about-face has led to a steady hum of activity. On a recent afternoon, other trains stopped to make way for two electric locomotives, their horns blowing, pulling more than 50 empty coal hopper cars ready to be filled. Large coal-carr ying trucks now form half-mile lines.
Allan Zhang, an electrician who works at a mine here, said his employer had raised monthly pay by nearly 50 percent since the summer.
Two years ago brought “the autumn of coal, and 2015 and earlier this year were the winter of coal”, Zhang said. “Now is the springtime of coal.”
The revival of coal production shows the flaws in the country’s half-finished evolution from central planning to the free market.
China’s coal problems stem from a series of official decisions that ramped up activity from energyintensive industries even as they curbed mining output. Speculators in China’s volatile financial markets, already prone to producing bubbles, ran up the price of coal. Weather and other setbacks haven’t helped.
Coal still produces almost threequarters of China’s electricity, despite ambitious hydroelectric dam projects and the world’s largest program to install solar panels and build wind turbines. Coal use in China also produces more emissions than all the oil, coal and gas consumed in the United States.
Troubled by pollution and worries about rising sea levels, China moved in recent months to rein in coal. Coal production dropped 3 percent last year – a result of that effort, but also a sign of slowing economic growth as well as a gradual shift in the Chinese economy toward American-style consumer spending and away from exports and heav y manufacturing.
That prompted the International Energy Agency to offer an optimistic reassessment this autumn: Chinese coal use peaked in 2013 and would now decline.
As a matter of policy, China says it is still committed to global efforts to stem climate change. When environmental officials from around the world gathered in Marrakesh, Morocco, to discuss climate change this month, Xie Zhenhua, the leader of China’s delegation, took an indirect swipe at Trump, saying, “a wise leader will follow the global and historical trend”.
Two years ago, cutting emissions looked easier for Beijing to achieve. China’s electricity consumption was stalling, and many coal-fired power plants began operating only half the time. But state-owned coal mining enterprises, flush with loans from state-owned banks, kept building more mines, leading to losses and dropping coal prices.
China began closing smaller, privately owned mines, cutting production while clamping down on some of the places that have made Chinese coal mining so dangerous. Just last summer, economic planners told mines they were not allowed to operate more than 276 days a year.
In recent weeks, China changed course.
It halted most coal trading on commodities markets and encouraged state-owned mines to sign long-term contracts at low prices with power stations. This month, the National Development and Reform Commission raised the number of days that mines could operate to 330 days per year.
China will most likely be able to avoid blackouts, said Chang Yijun, the president of Shanxi Fenwei Energy, a regional coal consulting firm, who added that remaining output caps like the 330-day rule would still limit growth in emissions of greenhouse gases.