cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/8998019
The declining industry is looking for ways to revive itself.
Coal has been in decline in many countries for two decades [but now] the coal industry has been looking for new ways to revive coal. Their latest plan: gasification.
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[In the United States], the Wabash Valley Resources coal-to-chemicals plant [in the state of Indiana] broke ground [planning] to produce 500,000 metric tons of blue ammonia. If built, it will be the first large-scale commercial coal gasification plant in the United States.
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Other countries are attempting the same thing. In China, there are now numerous newly opened and planned coal-to-chemicals plants. Indonesia, the world’s top coal exporter, is also pushing forward on plans to build several new coal gasification plants. If these are built, they could have widespread negative climate, environmental, and social impacts and make it harder to reduce emissions in line with science-based climate targets.
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“The main risk for any country considering this route is that it can create a high-carbon lock-in,” said Xinyi Shen, a researcher at the nonprofit Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. “While coal conversion may reduce import dependence, it can worsen the climate problem and leave countries with carbon-intensive industrial assets that may become harder to justify economically.”
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The United States, China, and Indonesia are among the largest coal-producing countries in the world. China has, nearly on its own, kept the global coal industry alive, more than making up for all the closures of coal-fired power plants in the US, Europe, and elsewhere, adding more capacity than the rest of the world combined in 2024 and 2025. While there are hopes that the country’s increase of solar and wind could finally lead to a slowdown in new grid coal, gasification, like in the US, presents another path for coal interests.
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Social concerns
For Indiana residents in the U.S., gasification is nothing new. Back during the George W. Bush administration, there was a plan for a $2.8 billion coal gasification plant in Rockport, Indiana, to produce a liquid fuel alternative to imported petroleum and natural gas. But the fracking and oil sands boom made that unnecessary. Despite millions spent on planning, the plant never broke ground and was canceled in 2013.
The Wabash includes many of the same environmental and social concerns as that project, Olson said.
“It will increase greenhouse gas emissions and be a significant threat to our water supplies and our water quality and public health through fugitive emissions,” said Olson,
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In China, it's notable that many of the planned coal gasification projects are located in the far western region of Xinjiang, home to the Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim community.
“In recent years, particularly amid heightened energy security concerns, China has poured enormous resources into developing the coal gasification industry in the Uyghur region, especially because of the region’s abundant coal reserves,” said Peter Irwin, co-executive director at the nonprofit Network for Uyghur Rights.
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