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All the coal in China: cheap and abundant, coal is the energy that powers China's economy, writes Rowan Callick. But it also may be the world's worst environmental problem.

Article Excerpt
THE INDUSTRIAL MUSCLE that has built China into the world's factory relies on three key inputs: first, an army of flexible, low-cost workers; second, ready access to foreign capital and technology; and third, cheap energy, which means coal, the source of two-thirds of China's total power and 79 percent of its electricity. Most things we buy today seem to be Made in China, and running through them is a hidden seam of coal.

All the coal in China may be the world's single biggest environmental problem because, while Chinas coal is inexpensive and abundant, it is also pernicious. Coal mining kills thousands of Chinese workers each year, and China burns coal with methods that both pollute the air and water and vastly increase the volume of climate-warming gases pumped into the atmosphere. But China's coal is a fact of environmental and economic life--a particularly potent and unacknowledged fact.

China is by far the world's top coal producer and consumer, using about 42 percent of the world's thermal coal for generating power and 48 percent of its metallurgical or coking coal for making steel. It uses more coal than the United States, Europe, and Japan together. Nine out of ten of China's new power plants run on coal, and somewhere in the country, a new coal-fired power station is being built every seven to ten days.

The results are not unexpected. Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi Province, where much of the country's coal is mined, has the world's worst air pollution, with concentrations of particulates that are seven times World Health Organization standards. Since coal is used heavily for heating and cooking, it causes as many as 700,000 premature Chinese deaths per year, according to the World Bank.

The contrast with the developed world is stark, especially with Europe, which is quickly phasing out coal altogether as a means of generating power. Early in February, for instance, the German government announced that it was ending coal subsidies, effectively wiping out the 37,000 jobs in the country's eight surviving pits. Coal is more important in the United States than in Europe. Its use is on a par with natural gas--responsible for 23 percent of all U.S....