“China’s coal production on the rise, along with reports of mining accidents”, 28 December 2019

China, the world’s biggest producer and user of coal, has built more coal-fired power plants, driving up demand for the fuel. As winter kicked in, demand spiked further and miners have been paying the price…

China Labour Bulletin’s accident map… points to 90 coal mining accidents so far in 2019 that killed 219 people. That compares with 79 accidents and 160 fatalities recorded by the group in the prior year, Geoffrey Crothall, its communications director, said…

In 2018, coal accounted for 59 per cent of China’s energy needs. Despite investments to modernise production, officials at China’s coal mine safety authority in Beijing have struggled for years to ensure basic compliance from mine operators in the provinces…

Following the recent spike in accidents, authorities said operators were putting financial gain ahead of worker safety. The operator of the Guanglong coal mine where the Guizhou blast took place failed to report the accident in the required time, the safety authorities said…

Major cuts were made in coal production capacity under China’s industrial reforms in 2015, according to Wang Dan, China analyst for The Economist Intelligence Unit in Beijing…

By 2018, production climbed back to 3.68 billion tonnes, and it rose 4.5 per cent in the first 11 months of 2019, according to the national statistics bureau.

In the first half of the year, the authorities approved five times as much new coal mining capacity as they had in all of 2018, according to a Reuters report quoting National Energy Administration documents…

Beyond the human cost of coal in accidents, fatalities and injuries, it is also blamed for the carbon emissions behind global warming. Beijing has pledged to transition its economy towards greener and safer energy solutions, but its increased use of coal was criticised at the United Nations’ 2019 climate change conference in Spain…

… Crothall, at China Labour Bulletin, said the sharp increase in coal production in China made accidents more likely.

 “That is largely because mines that had been inactive or underutilised for months or years were suddenly reopened, which is a very dangerous period,” Crothall said. “Many mine operators ignore the dangers and just push ahead in the search for profit.”

Cheng Wuyi, a professor in safety engineering at the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, said: “Some coal companies – not national state enterprises but state-run operators in provinces – increased capacity but their technology has lagged behind, so that has led to more accidents.”…