At least 100 miners face unemployment each day as India looks to other energy sources: Report

An average of 100 mine workers per day face potential unemployment by 2035 because of mine closure and market shift toward cheaper wind and solar power generation, finds a new report from Global Energy Monitor.

Nearly half a million workers (4,14,200) operate mines that may reach their end of operation before 2035, affecting an average of 100 workers per day.

By 2050, nearly 1 million coal mine jobs (9,90,200) will no longer exist at operating mines given the coal industry’s foreseeable closures, potentially laying off over one-third (37 per cent) of the existing workforce – even without climate pledges or policies to phase out coal.

China and India will likely be hardest hit

China’s Shanxi province would shed the most jobs globally — nearly a quarter of a million (2,41,900) by 2050 — while Coal India is the producer facing the largest potential jobs cuts of 73,800 by mid-century.

To estimate potential job losses, the Global Coal Mine Tracker records an operation’s reported “life of mine” — that is, how long coal companies intend to extract coal at the site under existing leases, permits, available reserves, and other economic considerations.

This dataset captures nearly 2.7 million coal miners directly employed at the world’s operating coal mines and finds that the coal industry is expected to shed nearly half a million jobs in the mining sector by 2035, affecting an average of 100 workers per day, underlining the urgency of action to prevent widespread social and economic strife.

The vast majority of these workers are in Asia (2.2 million jobs), with China and India expected to bear the brunt of coal mine closures. China has more than 1.5 million coal miners who produce over 85 per cent of its coal, which accounts for half of the world’s output. The northern provinces of Shanxi, Henan, and Inner Mongolia mine over one-quarter of the world’s coal and employ 32 per cent of the global mining workforce - approximately 8,70,400 people.

India, the world’s second-largest coal producer, has a workforce about half the size of China’s Shanxi province. The country officially employs approximately 3,37,400 miners at its operating mines, though some studies suggest the local mining sector has four “informal” employees for every direct employee.

Sandeep Pai, Director, Swaniti, said: “This kind of work is very crucial for understanding the social-economic implications of energy transition. Specifically, this level of data would go a long way in shaping transition policies for fossil fuel workers around the world. For example, this kind of baseline data could help estimate the scale of job creation required for transitioning workers in the fossil fuel industry.”

Prof. Runa Sarkar, a Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, said: “In October 2022, the Indian government has issued fresh guidelines on mine closure taking into account its associated ecological and socioeconomic complexities. There is a lot of work around building a circular economy around coal which recognises that a coal mining township soon becomes about much more than about coal itself. Finally, one must take into account that areas which are rich in coal are not the ones where the sun shines or the wind blows in abundance, which in turn implies a widening of regional imbalances as a result of mine closures.”