The global coal industry would have to let go of nearly 1 million jobs by 2050, a latest research stated on Tuesday. Even excluding any further commitments to move away from fossil fuels, the industry would potentially end up shedding almost 1 million jobs in the next three decades, the research said.
The study by US-based think tank, Global Energy Monitor (GEM), revealed that China and India would have to face the biggest losses in this transition as several labour-intensive mines are expected to shut down in the near future as they inch closer towards the end of their lifespans. This transition will happen as nations worldwide move ahead in replacing coal with cleaner low-carbon energy sources, reported Reuters.
However, the research body, GEM, cautioned that the majority of the mines that would potentially shut down, don’t have any set plans to manage this transition. These mines “have no planning underway to extend the life of those operations or to manage a transition to a post-coal economy”, GEM warned.
Dorothy Mei, project manager for GEM’s Global Coal Mine Tracker, noted that the governments need to start making plans to make sure the workers don’t suffer from this transition. She said, “Coal mine closures are inevitable, but economic hardship and social strife for workers are not.”
The think body studied 4,300 active and proposed coal mine projects around the world encompassing a total workforce of about 2.7 million people. In it’s research, it found that over 400,000 workers are a part of the workforce in mines set to shut down operations before 2035.
According to GEM estimates, if global measures were put in place to move away from coal to control global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsuis, a mere 250,000 miners would be needed across the world. This number represents less than 10 per cent of the current workforce.
The coal industry in China, the biggest in the world, currently employs more than 1.5 million people, the research body noted. Out of the total 1 million jobs expected to be lost by 2050 globally, over 240,000 of these would be cut down in the province of Shanxi alone. The coal industry in China has already gone through multiple phases of restructuring in recent years, and many mining districts in the north and northeast regions of the country today are still struggling to look for alternative sources of growth and employment after 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.”