Despite Climate Change Vow, China Pushes to Dig More Coal

JINCHENG, China — America’s uncertain stance toward global warming under the coming administration of Donald J. Trump has given China a leading role in the fight against climate change. It has called on the United States to recognize 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 and structural steel pipe production. Mines are reopening. Miners are being lured back with fatter 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-carrying 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,” Mr. 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 energy-intensive 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 three-quarters of China’s electricity, despite ambitious hydroelectric dam projectsand 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.

“I get a kick out of people in the West who think China is decarbonizing, because I see no sign of it whatsoever,” said Brock Silvers, a Shanghai banker who has previously served on the boards of two Chinese coal companies.

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 heavy manufacturing.

That prompted the International Energy Agency to offer an optimistic reassessment this autumn: Chinese coal use peaked in 2013 and would now decline.

China’s reversal now is prompting skepticism. “There is still a peak coming,” said Xizhou Zhou, the head of Asia and Pacific gas and power analysis at IHS Energy, a global consulting group. “It’s still going to increase.”

IHS Energy forecasts that Chinese coal demand will not peak until 2026.

Johannes Trüby, a senior coal and power analyst at the International Energy Agency, said that long-term trends in the Chinese economy meant that China’s coal use would decline over all. But with China stepping up production now, he said, “We cannot exclude the possibility of a transient spike in coal demand in the next couple years that might take demand above 2013.”

Hunan great steel pipe co.,ltd will try our best to supply many mild steel pipe according to Chinese Policy.