Addressing the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow on 2 November 2021, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed his nation, the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, to Net Zero carbon emissions for the first time, but only by 2070. He also set an ambitious national target of 500 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030, contingent on the expansion of alternative sources of energy (solar, wind, and nuclear) at the expense of coal. Meanwhile, India remains heavily dependent upon thermal coal-fired power plants for 70 per cent of its electricity needs and on coking coal for industrial steel production as the world’s second-largest steel producer, and will continue to do so in the near future. India is by no means alone in its enormous appetite for coal. A common denominator in countries that appear ambivalent at times over the pace of the global transition to cleaner energy sources is to be found in their continuing love affair with, and dependence on, coal. Fossil-fuel combustion is by far the leading source of man-made greenhouse emissions. And as long as coal-fired plants continue to be a major provider of electricity and energy, action on climate change is likely to face significant obstacles.
The world’s five largest reserves of coal were to be found, as at the end of 2020, in the US (23.2 per cent), Russia (15.1 per cent), Australia (14.0 per cent), China (13.3 per cent), and India (10.3 per cent), while the leaders in coal production, which continues to fall year-on-year, were China, Indonesia, India, Australia, the US, and Russia, also in descending order. The biggest consumers of coal at the end of 2020 were China, India, the US, and Russia, in that order, while the top two importers happened to be China (yet again) and India. Coal also plays a significant role in many other national economies, apart from those already listed, especially in the developing world.
India and China are key players in the global climate crisis, and their actions will help determine the eventual outcomes of decarbonisation policies, one way or another. India itself generates 70 per cent of its electricity requirements from coal, with 80 per cent of the coal produced locally being used by power plants. The state-owned Coal India Limited, formed in 1975 and overseen by the Government of India’s Ministry of Coal, is the world’s large coal-mining company, and its substantial turnover has earned it the status of a ‘Maharatna’ public sector undertaking. Even though India has the fifth-largest coal reserves in the world, concentrated in the coal belt of the eastern states of Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Odisha and West Bengal, it is also paradoxically the world’s second largest importer of coal.
Along similar lines, China is not only the world’s largest coal producer, with the bulk of production coming from its north and north-western provinces, such as Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, but also the biggest importer. China has imported thermal coal for electricity production, traditionally from Australia, Indonesia, Mongolia, and Russia, but imports from Australia were put on hold in late 2020 for political reasons and imports from Russia and South Africa stepped up by contrast the following year. In September 2021, China’s coal mines were even ordered to work at full capacity to supply coal-fired plants and thus help address power shortages across much of the country which were affecting manufacturing production.
Australia’s economic dependence on coal is reflected in Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s guarded approach towards reducing fossil-fuel emissions and his emphasis on a more gradual transition, enabled by low-emission technologies such as carbon capture and storage to offset continued carbon emissions. Australia has indeed overtaken Indonesia to become the world’s biggest coal exporter. Coal is mined in every Australian state, with the largest reserves to be found in New South Wales and Queensland. Coal production has been steadily increasing in recent years and coal remains the nation’s second biggest export, after iron ore. The extent of the trade in coal has even made Newcastle (NSW) the world’s biggest coal port.
The implications of economic dependence on coal can also be seen closer to home, in countries that have already signed up to Net Zero by 2050. Within the EU, Poland has the largest reserves of hard coal and relies on coal for 65 per cent of its energy. Coal is a major employer in the coal-rich region of Silesia in south-west Poland, where coal-mining is subsidised by the government. The country has, however, become embroiled in a dispute with the European Commission over continued operation of the Turow open-pit lignite (brown coal) mine on the Czech border, which has led to imposition of a “periodic penalty payment” of 500,000 euros per day. The European Court of Justice ordered immediate closure of the mine in May 2021 after the Czech Republic filed a case against the mine, claiming environmental degradation, but Poland has declined to do so, citing the importance of the site to both the nation’s electricity supply as well as to the local economy.
In the US, coal-fired plants continue to provide more than half the nation’s electricity and the majority of electricity in 32 states. The states of West Virginia and Wyoming are the first and second-largest coal producers, respectively. The economy of West Virginia, in particular, continues to be driven by coal mining and coal-fired power plants, despite a continued decline in employment opportunities. Attempts at decarbonising West Virginia’s economy continue to actively resisted by local politicians of all persuasions, with veteran Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who holds the balance of power in a 50-50 split US Senate, opposing a rapid move away from coal.
Even as the world moves towards a greener economy, practical solutions to address growing energy demands, in both larger economies such as China and India as well as in economically challenged developing countries, and without leading to economic difficulties in the short-term appear not quite up to the mark. The mismatch between climate-related rhetoric and the practicability of the solutions currently available is threatening to derail progress, despite the urgent imperative to act. Coal may have once been king, but even the troubled legacy of coal mining, with its many detrimental effects on human health, local environments, and global climate has failed to topple it off its throne. The political games that are being played out on the international arena as we move away from coal, driven by an inward-looking agenda of national economic priorities, warrant close attention as we await further developments.
Ashis Banerjee