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New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
Russia’s government is introducing support measures to help its coal industry, which has been described as undergoing its worst crisis since the 1990s. Tim Crawford reports.
There is growing concern in Russia about the dire financial state of the country’s coal industry, which has been left reeling from Western sanctions and the loss of the EU and Japanese markets, with exporters struggling to shift volumes to other markets because of rail and port bottlenecks.
Russia ranks as the sixth biggest coal producer in the world, after China, India, the US, Australia and Indonesia, with output surging to a height of 443.6mn tonnes in 2022, before the EU’s embargo on imports began to be felt. Around half of the coal that Russia produces is exported, with coal typically serving as Russia’s fourth-largest export commodity in terms of revenue, after oil, petroleum products and natural gas.
Furthermore, some regions of Russia are acutely reliant on the coal industry for their economy, jobs and budget revenue. This is especially the case in the Kemerovo region of south-west Siberia, which alone is responsible for close to half of national coal output.