‘Smart mines’ show coal deeply embedded in China’s future
One hundred metres underground inside a pit in northern China, miners extract lumps of coal with the flick of a finger on a smartphone, as the country tries to drag the traditionally dangerous and dirty work into the digital era.
The Hongliulin "intelligent mine" in coal-belt Shaanxi province is a flagship facility in a drive to modernise China's thousands of coal mines, even as the nation pledges to peak greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
China is the world's biggest emitter of the pollutants driving climate change, and its promises to curb them are essential to keeping global temperature rises below two degrees Celsius.
But mine digitalisation -- which aims to improve safety and productivity -- shows the continued importance of coal in a country that last year produced nearly 60 per cent of its electricity from the fossil fuel.
Smart mines are common in other coal-producing nations like Canada, but China has lagged and now the government is aiming to achieve basic digitalisation of all mines by 2035.
On a tour organised by telecoms giant Huawei -- whose technology underpins the changes at Hongliulin -- AFP journalists saw sensors, smart cameras and 5G relay boxes criss-crossing the facility.
Comments