Gazing over the remains of his home, Wang Bingbing surveys a decades-old jujube tree flowering through the rubble, and the yard where he and his wife once raised pigs, now a pile of crumbled brick.<\/p>\n
In the valley below, a sprawling coalmine is the source of their dislocation: years of digging heightened the risk of landslides, forcing Wang and his family out. To prevent the family from returning, local authorities later demolished their home.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really didn\u2019t want to leave,\u201d Wang\u2019s wife, Wang Weizhen, says ruefully.<\/p>\n
Wang\u2019s life is the story of coal\u2019s past, when the industry was notoriously dangerous but booming. His children and grandchildren are facing coal\u2019s future, an economic and environmental predicament that China\u2019s policymakers have yet to solve.<\/p>\n
As the world\u2019s largest greenhouse gas emitter transitions to cleaner energy, families like Wang\u2019s are on the precipice of being left behind by China\u2019s green revolution, fearing for their economic prospects as the country charts a delicate path between its fossil fuel foundations and clean energy ambitions.<\/p>\n
Wang Bingbing still has a scar on his forehead from an injury he suffered in a coalmine. Photograph: Ding Gang\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Looking older than his 55 years, Wang\u2019s body is marked by years in the industry. Above his right eyebrow rests a faint scar from a mining accident in his 20s that killed two of his colleagues. Ten years ago, he stopped working completely due to a liver illness, and he and his wife now survive on a monthly government welfare payment of 500 yuan (\u00a352).<\/p>\n
Born in 1971 in L\u00fcliang, a small city in western Shanxi, China\u2019s coal heartland<\/a>, Wang joined his local mine at the age of 18. \u201cMy family was poor and there was no work to do,\u201d he says. \u201cI didn\u2019t have much education either, so I had no choice but to work in the coalmine.\u201d<\/p>\n As the country grapples with its shift away from coal, it is also dealing with the increasing fallout from natural disasters, with 25 million people affected in the first half of this year, according to China\u2019s emergency ministry.<\/p>\n Wang Bingbing on the vacant lot of his old house. He hopes his grandson can avoid a life in the mines \u2013 \u2018it\u2019s too dangerous\u2019. Photograph: Ding Gang\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Coal is at the heart of Shanxi\u2019s economy. Between 2018 and 2023, more than 10% of all the coal produced globally was dug up from Shanxi\u2019s dry, silt-covered valleys, according to analysis from Global Energy<\/a> Monitor, a US-based NGO.<\/p>\n But the natural resource occupies an uneasy place in China\u2019s national plans. On the one hand, the country is pursuing renewable energy at a jaw-dropping scale. In May, China installed enough wind and solar to generate the same amount of electricity as Poland<\/a>. On the other, the majority of China\u2019s power generation still comes from coal, with officials seeing it as essential for ensuring energy security and jobs.<\/p>\n