India's shift to green power may cost 73,800 jobs at Coal India by 2050: GEM report

Nearly half a million workers (414,200) operate mines that may reach their end of operation before 2035, affecting on average nearly 100 workers per day in the mining sector, the report stated.

State-run miner Coal India Limited (CIL), which has the biggest workforce among listed government undertakings, is likely to axe 73,800 jobs by 2050 as India pledges to move from fossil fuels to green power, according to a research report released by the US-based think tank Global Energy Monitor (GEM) on October 10.

The transition to green power is likely to see over a million job-cuts around the world by 2050, the report said on the basis of the climate change pledges made by different countries. Besides India, China will be hit hardest with an estimated 241,900 layoffs by mid-century. China's coal industry, the world's biggest, employs more than 1.5 million people, GEM said.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) coined a term 'just transition' to define greening the economy in a way that is as fair and inclusive as possible to everyone concerned, creating decent work opportunities and leaving no one behind.

India, the world’s second largest coal producer, has a workforce of about half the size of China’s Shanxi province. India officially employs approximately 337,400 miners at its operating mines, though some studies suggest the local mining sector has four 'informal' employees for each direct employee.

Underlining the imperative that the governments remain involved in planning for coal worker transitions, the GEM report said Coal India is "facing the most potential layoffs" of 73,800 direct workers by 2050.

The report said nearly half a million workers (414,200) operate mines that may reach their end of operation before 2035, affecting nearly 100 workers a day in the mining sector. For the study, GEM covered 4,300 active and proposed coal mine projects around the world with a total workforce of 2.7 million.

At the UN climate talks in Glasgow in 2021, the participants agreed to phase down coal power and a phase out "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies. These two issues were never explicitly mentioned in the decisions of the UN climate talks before, despite coal, oil and gas being the main drivers of global warming.

"The future of coal mine employment is starker at mid-century. By 2050— a timeframe within the career of an under-40-year-old coal miner working today — nearly 1 million coal mine jobs (990,200) will no longer exist at operating mines under the coal industry’s foreseeable closures, potentially laying off over one-third (37 percent) of the existing workforce," read the report, Scraping By - Global Coal Miners And The Urgency Of A Just Transition.

But, most of the mines likely to shut down "have no planning underway to extend the life of those operations or to manage a transition to a post-coal economy", GEM said.

Dorothy Mei, Project Manager for the Global Coal Mine Tracker, said coal mine closures are inevitable, but economic hardship and social strife for workers is not. "Viable transition planning is happening, like in Spain where the country regularly reviews the ongoing impacts of decarbonisation. The governments should draw inspiration from its success in planning their own just energy transition strategies," she said.

If plans were implemented to phase down coal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), only 250,000 miners - less than 10 percent of the current workforce - would be required worldwide, GEM estimated.

Runa Sarkar, a professor at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, said the coal mining region most affected by mine closures is West Bengal. She said India, however, is yet to commit to a peaking year for coal production and, at present, coal production is on the rise, with talks of reopening some closed mines to meet the current demand.

Coal remains the largest single source of electricity worldwide, including in India, and is by far the largest source of electricity sector emissions, contributing just more than a third of power supply but responsible for nearly three-quarters of power sector CO2 emissions.

"It is important to recognise that in the normal course of things a push towards efficiency in production would lead to process automation and a concomitant loss of jobs. At the same time, in October, 2022, the government issued fresh guidelines on mine closure, taking into account its associated ecological and socioeconomic complexities," Sarkar said.

One must take into account that areas which are rich in coal are not the ones where the sun shines or wind blows in abundance, which in turn implies a widening of regional imbalances as a result of mine closures, Sarkar said.

"All this necessitates a more broad-based bottom up discussion around energy transition to ensure one which is both regionally balanced, sustainable and just," she added.

The Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted by 196 parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France in December 2015, aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. It also accords countries to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Each nation that ratifies the Paris Agreement pledges its own nationally determined contribution (NDC), which is to be revised on a five-year schedule, to reduce GHG emissions and to adapt to the effects of climate change.

India on its part has updated its NDC targets under which it has committed to reducing the emission intensity of its GDP by 45 percent by 2030, from the 2005 level and achieving about 50 percent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by 2030.