FUTURE SHINES AS COAL FADES
A former center of China’s fossil fuel industry puts its economy on a cleaner, sustainable track, as reports from Huaibei, Anhui.
soil and water to the hills.
To date, trees have been planted on 6,670 hectares of once-barren hills, and the city government has constantly increased the financial support it provides. About 86 percent of the conifers were planted from 2009 to 2015 as part of a “green” program.
Now, the city has a forestry coverage rate of nearly 21 percent, setting a good example for provincial afforestation projects, Tao said.
In the southern suburbs of Huaibei, a city in the eastern province of Anhui, there are large areas of water, which resemble natural lakes and serve as wetland parks.
However, these “lakes” are the result of subsidence. They are a reminder that the city, one of China’s largest coal production bases, has struggled to eradicate the economic and environmental problems created by mining, which was once its dominant industry.
Having produced 1 billion metric tons of raw coal since it was established in 1960, Huaibei still has reserves of more than 4.6 billion tons.
The city’s urban area is surrounded by mines in the east, south and west, while in the north the formerly barren Xiangshan Mountain has become a forestry park as a result of decades of tree-planting projects by the local government.
Mining kept the city on the fast track of growth, especially from 2003 to 2012, a period known as the “Golden Decade” of coal production, according to Huang Xiaowu, Party chief of Huaibei, which has a population of 2.18 million.
In 2013, when Huang was appointed as the city’s mayor — he became Party chief last year — he had narrowly missed the coal industry’s best times. Instead, he inherited a host of problems.
“In the middle of 2012, the domestic price of coal began to tumble. By end of last year, the price of raw coal had plummeted by almost two-thirds,” he said.
Given that the coal industry accounted for half of Huaibei’s annual tax revenue, the difficulties Huang encountered were numerous and tough.
Now, as a result of ongoing efforts the city is maintaining steady growth, but of a kind that’s economically and environmentally sustainable.
Plentiful reserves
“The raw coal reserves in Huaibei are high quality and environmentally friendly because they contain less sulfur and phosphorus than those in other parts of the country,” said Zhang Zhen, chief engineer at the Huaibei bureau of land and resources.
The city’s reserves are composed of several types of coal, including thermal coal, coking coal and anthracite, which can be used to produce a wide range of chemical materials, according to Zhang, who started at the bureau in 1994.
For decades, Huaibei was the largest electricity generation base in East China, one of the country’s most industrialized and developed areas, which helped to fuel the region’s growth.
When the city was established nearly six decades ago, tens of thousands of people flocked to the area from across the country to work in the mines.
With annual raw coal output of around 50 million tons in recent years, Huaibei is now entering the twilight of its days as a coal mining center, Zhang said.
Since 2008, 69 cities have been listed as largely relying on natural resources that will be exhausted in the foreseeable future. Huaibei joined the list in 2009.
At its peak in around 2010, more than 100,000 people worked in the city’s coal mines, and about 300,000 were employed in related industries. They and their families will be affected by the decline of coal mining, according to Long Baomin, deputy director of the Huaibei Municipal Development and Reform Commission.
As the country has tackled overcapacity in the coal sector, almost all the private mines in Huaibei have been closed, along with some small Stateowned facilities.
Despite that, more than 70,000 people are still employed in the city’s coal sector, the commission said.
Last year alone, the city transferred more than 7,000 miners to non-coal industries. “Shifting more people out of the sector will require a more developed non-coal industry, so it can only be done gradually,” Long said, adding that the authorities plan to reduce the number of miners to 50,000 by 2020.
Industrial changes
In the early decades, most of the coal produced in Huaibei was sold as a raw material, but in recent years, the city decided to build a stronger coal chemical sector and use more coal in the production of valuable chemical materials and end products.
In 2010, the Huaibei New Coal Chemical Industry and Synthetic Materials Base was founded in Suixi, a county about 50 kilometers from the city’s downtown.
In September last year, the authorities formulated a strategy to build Huaibei into China’s “Carbon Technology Valley” and make local industries
Shifting more people out of the sector will require a more developed non-coal industry.” Long Baomin, deputy director of the Huaibei Municipal Development and Reform Commission
more environmentally friendly.
When the focus shifts from carbon technology to the more specific field of coal chemicals, the complex has great potential because many regions have ruled that chemical companies must be located in dedicated industrial zones, said Sun Yulin, deputy director of the coal chemical base. Sun’s base is one of four in Anhui.
“Attempts to attract investment have accelerated since last year when the carbon technology valley strategy was brought forward and a lot of favorable policies followed,” he said.
In the blueprint for Huaibei’s transformation, food production has also been designated a pillar industry of the city, which sits on the Huanghuaihai Plain, China’s largest area of grain cultivation.
Most of the food companies are located in the Fenghuangshan Food Industry Development Zone in Xiangshan district.
The development of the zone, which was founded in 2009, has accelerated since 2013, according to the local government.
Since 2014, the city’s food industry has registered gross production value of more than 38 billion yuan ($5 billion), compared with 23 billion yuan in 2012. That’s largely as a result of the zone’s growth.
“So far, more than 60 food producers, mostly from other parts of the country, have been attracted to the zone because they know Huaibei urgently wants to develop the sector into a new pillar for the local economy and is offering a range of support measures in areas such as land use and tax incentives,” said Hu Qishu, head of Xiangshan government.
In recent years, the development of new industries has seen the city’s industrial zones achieve combined production value of almost 122 billion yuan, according to figures released by the municipal government. In 2008, the figure was 4.25 billion yuan.
Environmental projects
Although it created wealth, the mining industry also triggered a range of environmental problems, and 23,500 hectares of land subsided, meaning 275 villages had to be relocated and more than 200,000 farmers were left without land to work.
The city covers 2,741 square kilometers, with about 235 sq km affected by subsidence, according to the local land and resource authorities.
Ecological restoration work began in the 1980s. Since then, a 5-square-kilometer area of subsidence has been converted into the Nanhu Wetland Park, which last year passed an evaluation conducted by the provincial tourism authorities and is expected to be listed as a national AAAA — the second-highest grade in the tourism sector — scenic spot.
“Using the example of Nanhu Lake, the city invested 440 million yuan to restore the 670-hectare Donghu Lake in 2011. Meanwhile, since 2014 more than 2 billion yuan has been spent on work to restore the 2,400-hectare Zhonghu Lake,” Zhang said.
“The lakes, as we now call them, resulted from the ground sinking after coal was excavated.”
The Donghu Lake project was basically finished in 2014 and now the area is being treated by landscape designers. The work at Zhonghu Lake is expected to be completed by end of the month.
In recent years, the authorities have restored 12,420 hectares of land affected by subsidence, almost half of which has been turned into agricultural land. Other areas have been earmarked for construction and aquaculture.
“A lot of the residential communities and government buildings in the new areas are built on areas affected by subsidence,” said Zhang, whose office sits on one of the sites.
The city lacks water sources, so a canal has been dug to bring 80 million to 130 million cubic meters of water annually from the Huaibei River more than 100 kilometers away. The lakes will also serve as reservoirs.
Decades of afforestation work have resulted in previously bare hills being covered with woodland, according to Tao Shijun, deputy head of the local forestry bureau.
“The hills were barren because there was barely any soil on them”, he said.
To plant the trees — mostly a type of conifer called oriental arborvitae — the forestry workers used spades, steel rods and even explosives to dig holes in the stony ground. Then, they had to transport