Climate change: China, India to bear the brunt with half a million coal workers facing job cuts globally by 2035 due to mine closures and energy transition

San Francisco-based non-profit Global Energy Monitor urges the industry to plan ‘just transition’ strategies for the sector’s unpredictable future

‘Coal mine closures are inevitable, but economic hardship and social strife for workers is not’, report co-author says

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Diggers move coal at the port in Lianyungang, in China’s eastern Jiangsu province. China has more than 1.5 million coal miners who produce half of the world’s coal. Photo: AFP

Published: 8:15am, 10 Oct 2023

Nearly half a million coal miners face unemployment globally by 2035 due to mine closures and a market shift towards cheaper wind and solar power generation, with China and India likely to be hit hardest, a new report said.

That equates to 100 workers being laid off every day for the next 12 years, according to a report released on Tuesday by San Francisco-based non-profit Global Energy Monitor (GEM). The report looks into the employment of nearly 2.7 million coal miners working at 4,300 active and proposed coal mines and projects around the world that are together responsible for more than 90 per cent of global coal production.

By 2050, about 1 million coal mine jobs, or 37 per cent of the existing workforce at operating mines, will no longer exist given the coal industry’s foreseeable closures, even without host countries’ climate pledges or policies to phase out coal, the report said.

Most coal mines that are expected to close in the coming decades have no planning under way to extend the life of their operations or to manage a transition to a post-coal economy, GEM said. It urged the industry to plan “just transition” strategies for the sector’s unpredictable future.

“The coal industry has a long list of mines that will close in the near term – many of them state-owned enterprises with a government stake,” said Tiffany Means, GEM researcher and a co-author of the report. “Governments need to shoulder their share of the burden to ensure a managed transition for these workers and communities, as we move into a clean-energy economy.”

The report raises the question of whether the coal and other energy-intensive industries will manage the job transfer and re-skilling needed to meet expectations of a just transition, which refers to practices that help with mitigating and adapting to climate change without sacrificing key stakeholders’ interests.