On Tuesday, and new research report was released which shows that the global coal industry may need to eliminate as many as 1 million jobs by 2050, even without any further action taken to tackle climate change. According to the report, the biggest losses will likely be seen in China and India.
The report found that as nations begin to replace their coal usage with cleaner low-carbon energy sources, that will combine with the fact that hundreds of heavily worked coal mines will be approaching the end of their lifespans, which will produce a record level of reduction of the global coal-mining workforce.
The report, by the U.S.-based think tank, Global Energy Monitor (GEM), warned that most of the mines which will need to shut down operations, “have no planning underway to extend the life of those operations or to manage a transition to a post-coal economy.”
The project manager for GEM’s Global Coal Mine Tracker, Dorothy Mei, noted that governments need to begin working now to formulate plans to aid workers who are going to endure the disruptions from the energy transition.
She said, “Coal mine closures are inevitable, but economic hardship and social strife for workers are not.”
In its report, GEM examined almost 4,300 active and proposed coal mine projects which employed a combined workforce of almost 2.7 million. Of those employees, over 400,000 workers were employed by mines which will close down prior to 2035.
If the world were to take measures to reduce coal consumption to reduce global warming down to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degreed Fahrenheit) the required workforce globally would drop to 10 percent of the current workforce, at only 250,000 miners, according to GEM’s estimates.
Currently over 1.5 million people are employed as miners in China’s coal industry, the biggest in the world. GEM estimated that of the 1 million jobs forecasted to be lost by 2050, over 240,000 would be in the province of Shanxi alone.
China has already restructured its coal industry in recent decades, closing many mining districts, in the north and northeast. Those regions were subsequently forced to look for alternative sources of employment for their citizens after the mine closures.
Ryan Driskell Tate, GEM’s program director for coal said, “The coal industry, on the whole, has a notoriously bad reputation for its treatment of workers. What we need is proactive planning for workers and coal communities … so industry and governments will remain accountable to those workers who have borne the brunt for so long.”
