Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t be.nice – As global demand for coal skyrockets, a shortage of coal miners is the biggest impediment the growing coal renaissance.
Coal Mines Struggle From Worker Shortage As Demand Soars Worldwide
WRITTEN BY JAKE KARALEXIS ON MAY 13, 2022. POSTED IN LATEST NEWS
In Benwood, West Virginia, money comes in as coal goes out.
“They can’t mine it fast enough,” said Benwood Economic Development Director Frank Longwell. “That’s how we pay our bills here in the community.” [bold, links added]
Longwell remembers when coal mines were so popular that they were turning away job applicants. You can make $100,000 a year mining coal in Benwood.
But coal miners are going through a hiring shortage, which is hurting production.
“The main complaint that I hear on a daily basis: ‘We need people,’” Longwell said. “Some of the production does get cut back because they don’t have the people.”
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Read more: https://climatechangedispatch.com/coal-mines-struggle-from-worker-shortage-as-demand-soars-worldwide/
According to Bloomberg, China is leading the rebound in coal demand, in an effort to protect economic growth and shield their economy from further energy shocks.
h/t Mike Maguire;
China Briefing, 17 March 2022: Beijing ‘doubling down on fossil fuels’; China’s CO2 emissions increase; Coal production growth
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly China Briefing email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
Snapshot
Chinese leaders are “doubling down on fossil fuels” amid “growing” fears of global energy shortages and “rising” concerns of an economic slump, according to Bloomberg. The news came after the Chinese government repeatedly underlined the importance of energy security at a series of key political meetings last week. 上微信关注《碳简报》
Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said last week that China was the main driving force behind a global CO2 emissions “rebound” past pre-pandemic levels. Separately, an energy advisor to the Chinese government told state TV that China’s CO2 emissions had grown by 350m tonnes last year, more than double the average annual increase in recent years.
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Read more: https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-briefing-17-march-2022-beijing-doubling-down-on-fossil-fuels-chinas-co2-emissions-increase-coal-production-growth/
As WUWT reported yesterday, India has also joined the coal production race, announcing plans to increase coal production by 400 million tons in the next two years, and double coal use by 2040. A 400-million-ton coal production surge would increase global CO2 emissions by 1.5 billion tons per year.
Obviously this is all part of a big carbon plot to suppress renewable energy, right? Those fools, don’t they realise renewables are the cheapest form of new build electricity?
I mean surely it couldn’t be that greens have lied their butts off all along about the viability and cost of renewables, and countries like India and China have woken up that greens have been peddling trash all this time, both their climate emergency claims and their useless green energy “solutions”?
Do I need a /sarc tag?
The sad part of this story is a lot of the coal workers in West Virginia and elsewhere are mining is being shipped to Asia, to India and China. This is great news for West Virginian coal miners, but what about everyone else?
Imagine what a boost the US economy would experience if US workers were free to join the low cost manufacturing party, if that cheap coal was being shipped to US manufacturers.
Sadly the economically deranged policies of our net zero obsessed hypocrite politicians are choking off this opportunity.
Instead of competing toe to toe with the Asian manufacturing boom, US workers are increasingly being frozen out and forced to stay on the sidelines.
Our hypocrite politicians are still facilitating the use of coal, the coal is still being burned, but the manufacturing boom being fueled by the burning of all that exported coal is mostly making other people rich.
via Watts Up With That?
May 14, 2022
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