China’s worst blizzard this winter exposed a flaw in Beijing’s drive to create remote coal mining hubs as it tries to streamline heavy industries and clear the air in populated regions: a lack of railroads to get the fuel to market.
BEIJING: China’s worst blizzard this winter exposed a flaw in Beijing’s drive to create remote coal mining hubs as it tries to streamline heavy industries and clear the air in populated regions: a lack of railroads to get the fuel to market.
Heavy snow storms snarled the world’s largest rail network this week, closing highways, freezing ports and cutting off critical supplies of thermal coal.
The bottlenecks added to a month-long coal price rally and prompted four top utilities to warn of potential heating and electricity shortages ahead of the upcoming Lunar New Year.
By Friday, rare heavy snow in south and central regions had eased, but railways were still clogged. State railway operator China Railway Corp has imposed more emergency measures to increase coal deliveries to southern power producers running low on stock.
Rail experts and executives at utilities warn chaotic episodes like this may become more frequent over coming years until new freight lines are built.
“China’s railway capacity is seriously inadequate, even though it has invested lots of money each year to build new lines,” said Zhao Jian, professor at Beijing Jiaotong University.
Adding further strain to the system, the government last year required thousands of factories to use rail to ship cargo rather than roads, the nation’s favourite mode of transportation.
Aside from rail capacity, the issue can also be traced back to central government policy that has closed small mines and reduced output in the south, limiting availability of regional spot supplies that could normally pick up the slack.
By creating mining hubs in more remote northern and western regions, the fuel has further to travel to get to the coal-fired power plants that produce most of the nation’s electricity.
