The end of the line for coal mines? (Image: Wang Chun/Imaginechina/Corbis )

Could the world be approaching peak coal production?

It sounds unlikely, given that demand for the black stuff has surged in the past decade. But Beijing is planning to ban coal burning in its six central districts from 2020. If energy-hungry China backs away from coal, the demise of the world’s dirtiest fuel may be at hand.

The Beijing plan was announced on Monday by the city’s Municipal Bureau of Environmental Protection. It is no pipedream. The first of four big coal-fired power stations, Gaojing, shut last month. The city plans to turn off the rest by the end of 2016, but two will be kept functional but mothballed for emergencies.


Four new gas-fired plants, and pipelines to bring more gas to the city from Shaanxi province, are under construction. Smaller coal-burning factories and heating plants will also have to shut or move out by 2020.

Beijing won’t clean its air overnight. Cars and other vehicles are the biggest source of the deadly particulate matter in the city’s smogs, ahead of coal, according to a report last year from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dust storms also play a role.

Ditch the black stuff

Nevertheless the ban would be a huge turnaround. China accounts for half the coal burned every year. Coal’s share of global energy production has risen from 25 to 30 per cent since 2000, and China was responsible for 82 per cent of that growth.

The tide is turning against coal in China thanks to public opposition to killer smogs that take years off people’s lifespans. Last year, the government banned new coal-fired plants around smog-bound Shanghai and Guangzhou.

China’s growth in coal consumption has fallen from 18 per cent a year a decade ago to less than 3 per cent now. Consumption will probably decline after 2020, says Nan Zhou of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. By then China will have more anti-smog policies and an economy less dependent on energy-intensive industry, and its heavy investment in renewables, nuclear power and energy efficiency will have kicked in.

That means peak coal in China could become a global trend. A 2013 report by analysts at Citi Research in New York says the global boom in coal production could turn to bust, because a Chinese pull-out would leave assets like mines “stranded”.