Nearly 1 million coal mining jobs will be lost globally by 2050, even without commitments or policies to phase out coal, as mines close and the energy transition continues, according to Global Energy Monitor (GEM), a nonprofit clean energy advocacy organization.
Taking into account planned closures in the coal industry, a total of 990,200 coal mining jobs will be eliminated globally by 2050, with India and China bearing the brunt of the layoffs, GEM said in a new report.
By 2035, nearly half a million workers, or 414,200, will be working in mines that could reach the end of their operations before 2035, affecting an average of 100 workers per day, according to the organization.”We need to put workers first on the agenda if we want to make sure the just transition isn’t just talk,” said Ryan Driskell Tate, coal program director at GEM.
“As technologies and markets prepare for an energy transition, we need to proactively address the unique concerns of coal miners and their communities.”
While the long-term outlook for coal jobs is bleak, India and China are currently adding coal-fired capacity to meet growing electricity demand.
China is building or planning to build about 366 GW of new coal capacity, accounting for about 68% of the world’s planned new coal capacity through 2022.
China also accounted for more than half of the new global coal capacity that came online last year, according to a Global Energy Monitor report earlier this year.
Greenpeace said in a report last month that China approved more than 50 GW of new coal power in the first half of 2023 alone. The environmental campaign group added that’s more than in all of 2021.
Around 70% of India’s electricity is still generated from coal.
Despite an ambitious carbon-neutral target of 2070, India is still investing heavily in new coal power to support growth, with a pipeline of over 50 GW of projects planned and under construction,” Wood Mackenzie said earlier this month in a report on power demand and investment in the Asia-Pacific region.