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China's mine disasters threaten its energy security

In its hurry to extract coal and meet tonnage targets, China is losing an opportunity to tap the massive stores of methane that are escaping into the atmosphere from coal mines. This would go towards meeting China's fuel needs, cut emissions and make mines safer for workers

China has been remarkably successful in improving safety in a coal industry that killed thousands of miners every year during the 2000s, but methane remains a looming threat. (Representational image)

Feeding China’s voracious energy demands poses a series of interlocking problems.

Coal, the traditional bedrock of its power system, is abundant in domestic fields. On the other hand, it’s dangerous to mine, damaging to the climate and human health, and ill-suited for handling the needs of a grid hosting ever-growing amounts of renewable power.

Natural gas is cleaner and more flexible for electricity generation, but it’s relatively scarce domestically. Beijing, which is wary of dependence on foreign powers for essential commodities, imports 40 percent of the gas it uses, a proportion that may well rise in future. Meanwhile, use of fossil fuels is driving a climate-exposed country toward disasters that could have a devastating human and environmental toll.

What if there was a way to deal with all these problems with one weird trick: displacing a third of gas imports, cutting emissions by hundreds of millions of metric tons, and reducing risks to miners all at once? That’s the potential if the country can crack down on methane released from its coal mines.