China Mines Even More Coal, Releasing An Extra 2.5 Million Tons Of Methane Since 2021 In The Process
China’s ramping up of its reliance on coal-fueled power plants over fears of an energy crunch already had climate experts worried, but now a study shows that the renewed mining will boost levels of a greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide — methane.
The increased production and expanded capacity from mines is on track to add 10 percent to worldwide emissions of coal-mining methane, threatening to undermine international efforts to tackle global warming, according to the estimate released this week by Global Energy Monitor, a San Francisco-based nongovernmental organization that tracks fossil fuel projects.
While it is the carbon dioxide released by burning coal that has garnered most of the attention in the fight against climate change, methane by volume has far larger short-term effects on atmospheric temperature. Over a 100-year period, the global warming potential of the colorless and odorless gas is about 25 times that of CO2. Over 20 years, the impact is about 80 times as large. The study found that China’s efforts to dig out more coal had already released about 2.5 million tons of additional methane from mines since late last year when the government ordered more output to end an energy crunch.
Newly proposed projects from the mining boom could add the same production capacity as that of Indonesia, the world’s third-largest coal producer, and threaten to release an additional 6 million tons of methane per year, a 10 percent increase of the global total for coal mine methane, according to the authors’ estimates. Some of the projects are mega-mines that will extract the black rock from deep underground, a process that produces more methane than surface mining.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/27/china-methane-coal-climate-change/