WWF, Greenpeace, and The Energy Foundation have just released the 74 page report The True Cost of Coal (PDF Here) that looks at the role of coal in China’s society.. and its toll on the society.

To introduce the topics of the report, Greenpeace has loaded the video below that runs through a number of the direct impacts the coal mining industry in Shanxi has on residents (houses falling in was a new one for me).

I will be taking the time to read this report later this week and offering more thoughts, and I highly recommend you take the time as well.  I have read a number of Greenpeace’s reports, and all the “save the world” aside, their reports are some of the best researched I have seen in China.. and very informative.

UPDATE: Shortly after posting this, I received another report entitled Can China’s coal industry be
reconciled with the environment? (h/t East Asia Forum).  Written by Xunpeng Shi,

The central thesis of Shi’s paper is that, due to a decreasing trend of “pollution emissions” per unit of coal in China, the coal industry can “harmonise with the environment”. This seems to suggest that due to the improving emission intensity of China’s coal industry, there will eventually come a point where its emissions are not damaging to the environment.