Wherever you are in the world, successful action on climate change requires support from the public. In China’s case, this support has been strong since 2020, when Xi Jinping announced the “dual carbon” targets, to peak national carbon emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.
As we found in earlier research, the difficulties will come later, during the push towards carbon neutrality. Getting to peak carbon has mostly been a process of expansion; there was more cake to go round, even if some received a smaller slice than others.
But reaching carbon neutrality and transitioning the energy mix will mean shrinking fossil-fuel industries, inevitably affecting the regions in which they are important.
Will people living in these areas and undergoing that transition remain so supportive if they see their slice of the cake disappearing? To find out, we spent a year surveying and interviewing those most likely to lose out during the transition: residents of the coal-mining province of Shanxi.
We wanted to know what they think about climate change and the energy transition, to examine the factors that will influence future support for it.
For this, we teamed up with non-profit People of Asia for Climate Solutions. With the help of over 200 volunteers, we surveyed 6,035 Shanxi residents on the low-carbon energy transition. Respondents included 1,323 coal industry workers and 2,143 of their family members. We also visited mining communities to carry out 30 in-depth interviews, and analysed climate reporting in five provincial news outlets.
The present article broadly explores what we found and our consequent recommendations. Our full findings are in the report, “Firmer foundations for future transitions: Understanding of the energy transition in Shanxi”.
In short, while many coal workers had little idea of what the transition will mean for them, they strongly wished it to be a fair and open process. Based on this and our other findings, we recommend that more education about the transition be provided for local people.
When designing policy, local people should be consulted and the priority should be ensuring livelihoods. To this end, skills training for new jobs will be crucial. Finally, compensation should be given where necessary to ensure former energy regions like Shanxi don’t take an unfair hit due to the transition.
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A reasonable and incremental energy-transition policy will allow the public to participate in the process and increase perception of that process’s reasonableness, legitimacy and fairness.
Jia Hepeng, professor, Soochow University
A public conflicted
Shanxi is at the heart of China’s coal industry. Prior to 2024, when it was overtaken by Inner Mongolia, the province produced more coal than any province in China. But the years of mining also brought serious environmental problems.
Though coal employment has been falling for years due to a reduction in overcapacity and other reforms, the coal mining and preparation sectors still employed 878,600 people in Shanxi as of 2021.
Add in those working in associated jobs upstream or downstream, or in coal-related services – such as production of mining equipment, coal transportation and coking – and you have millions of people in the province relying on coal for their livelihoods.
The transition will affect coal power plants and coal mines, and will accordingly change employment patterns and incomes. We think those employees are most likely to be negatively affected, and thus are most likely to be unsupportive of the transition. Our findings, though, presented a more complicated picture.
First, people in Shanxi are, like elsewhere in China, widely supportive of China’s climate policies. But they also lack understanding of associated concepts and the actual policies. In our survey, 72.9 per cent of respondents said they support the government’s dual-carbon targets, and 72.6 per cent supported the implementation of those targets in Shanxi. However, only 50 per cent could accurately say what “peak carbon” or “carbon neutrality” actually mean.
Responses to a question about emissions trends were also disappointing. We asked if it was true that “after years of policy to cut emissions and save energy, China’s emissions have reduced”. Only 10.2 per cent of respondents identified this statement as false.
This indicates that climate policies enjoy strong support but are poorly understood, tallying with what we have earlier found among the general public in China.
We also found that coal is a part of the local identity. Three-quarters of respondents said they take pride in Shanxi’s coal industry, and there was general agreement that the province’s future would be closely linked with the fuel. Despite widespread support for national low-carbon policies, respondents were generally opposed to closing coal mines. Only 28.9 per cent said they were supportive or strongly supportive of closing local mines.
When it comes to closing coal power plants in local cities, opponents again outnumbered supporters (with 33.5 per cent strongly opposed, 12.3 per cent opposed, 28.8 per cent neutral, 18.3 per cent supportive and 7.7 per cent very supportive).
Shanxi residents display confidence in future renewables development. Respondents agreed that the province should expand the solar and wind power industries (77.5 per cent and 76.9 per cent, respectively), and also that the energy transition will bring new jobs (59.7 per cent).
These viewpoints accord with major government goals and directions. They show us that support for the dual carbon targets mainly springs from trust in the government and patriotic nationalist sentiment.
But as our earlier research found, the move towards carbon neutrality may cause some to lose out. Therefore, “national risk perception” based on concern for national interests can no longer fully predict public behaviour. “Individual benefit perception” related to personal interests will become increasingly important.
Our research has led us to believe that in Shanxi, the perception of individual benefits means that climate policy may lose support if the transition results in the closure of many mines. However, if such policy results in powerful support for the renewables sector, leading to the creation of new jobs, local support will remain high.
Pessimistic coal workers
Attitudes amongst coal industry workers, though, are different. They and their family members are less certain about the province’s ability to adapt to renewables, and feel uncertain and worried about their own futures and the transition.
Specifically, 33.4 per cent of coal worker respondents said they lacked the skills needed to adapt to the transition, while 33.3 per cent said they had only average capacity to adapt.
Coal industry workers are also more pessimistic about adapting to the energy transition over the next five to ten years. Asked if the transition would have a negative effect on the economic circumstances of their household, 40.3 per cent of respondents agreed. Only 34.3 per cent said they had the skills to cope with employment changes arising from the transition. Furthermore, only 37.5 per cent said the city or region they lived in would be able to smoothly achieve, or adapt to, the transition.
Coal industry workers were also more likely than other respondents to believe the transition would result in losses, and had less confidence in Shanxi’s ability to achieve the transition. When asked if the transition would result in the closure of many coal mines, 66 per cent of coal industry workers said it would, compared to 54.8 per cent of others. Of the coal industry workers, 53.5 per cent expect the transition to lead to increased unemployment, while only 36.9 per cent of others respondents said the same.
Interviewees rarely reported having received training to prepare them for the transition and had little idea of what the transition would mean for them personally. We think this is linked to media reporting. Analysing climate reporting in five provincial media outlets, we found a focus on policy-oriented grand narratives, rather than on how ordinary people can respond to the transition.
Our interviews with local people also found that those associated with the coal industry did not think the transition is currently fair enough, nor that they had been adequately informed about it. In our survey of employees at big coal firms, we found that non-managerial staff had few opportunities to find out about their employer’s progress on decarbonisation. For example, data on carbon intensity is not made available to employees. Lacking basic information on the transition, there is little scope for people to participate in policy setting and implementation.
Some interviewees employed at large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) said they had become numb to transition buzzwords. They have for years been hearing about “SOE reform”, “resource-exhausted cities”, “transitions for former mining areas” and “transitions for urban development”, without any noticeable impact on their lives, leaving them disengaged, they noted.
A new generation thirsting for justice
Our data also shows that Shanxi’s public has a strong wish to see a just, fair and open transition. That is particularly the case for coal industry workers and their family members: over 70 per cent of them agreed or strongly agreed that every aspect of transition work is important. This includes consultation of parties impacted by the transition during the process; a fair distribution of transitional impacts; compensation for past harms; and recognition and respect of the differing needs within society.
The under-25s, the group with the best understanding of climate issues, was particularly keen to see a just transition. They ranked openness and transparency as most important during the transition, such as during evaluation of proposals for compensation, employment and industrial restructuring. This was followed by the prioritisation of employment over profit, and ensuring that everyone shares in the benefits arising from the development of renewables.
This means the government should ensure the low-carbon transition is as just as possible in practice, and maintain a high degree of transparency when setting policy, particularly during implementation. For public support to remain high, the government also needs to allow public participation, as this will increase the perception of fairness.
As mentioned, support for the dual-carbon targets from the public exists on the precondition that they as individuals do not lose out. Our research has shown us that many members of the public do not understand the intrinsic connection between climate change and the energy transition, and how it will impact them.
Policymakers need to take note of this. When the impacts of the dual-carbon targets arrive, support for the policies may decrease. It is also possible that the transition in Shanxi will lead to social discontent due to the potential for job losses and other reasons, affecting China’s overall progress.
The transition needs public participation
Shanxi’s coal industry employs almost one million people and many more work in associated industries. If those workers are not fully supportive of the transition, it will negatively impact the national energy transition and low-carbon development. In particular, we saw low levels of confidence that alternative, suitable jobs will be available. This was alongside strong demand for a fair, just and open transition. Transition policy must take these factors into account.
To return to the question posed at the start: as the transition and journey to carbon neutrality could harm the interests of some people, how can we maintain support for it in the long term? We have the following recommendations:
First, stronger communication and education on the energy transition. Beyond just high-level vocabulary, policymakers need to help the public understand the necessity of the transition, the long-term benefits, and the actual challenges.
Also, policy frameworks need to be centred around justice, and the public’s concerns need to be listened to. This doesn’t just mean ensuring an even allocation of benefits. The particular needs of coal industry workers, low-income groups and residents in remote areas need to be taken into account. Policies should be designed to put jobs first and ensure local people have livelihoods, rather than only thinking about overall regional and economic growth.
At the same time, measures such as skills training and employment support should be used to help the workers and communities affected. In particular, local communities should be mobilised for education and capacity building for the transition, to promote genuine public participation.
Finally, compensatory mechanisms should be prioritised and benefits should be reallocated across regions that have different energy niches. “Old”, or coal-dominant energy regions such as Shanxi, should not suffer excessively during the transition to “new”, or renewable energy, especially compared to regions already benefiting from renewable energy development, such as the coastal provinces.
We can see Shanxi is already taking action. In 2024, the provincial government’s official WeChat account published a glossary of 36 key terms found in that year’s Government Work Report. The first one featured was “just transition”. This is a good start. A reasonable and incremental energy-transition policy will allow the public to participate in the process and increase perception of that process’s reasonableness, legitimacy and fairness. That will be vital for progress on the dual-carbon targets, both in Shanxi and nationally.
This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth under a Creative Commons licence.
