Climate change mitigation in the coal mining industry: low-carbon pathways and mine safety indicators

As China’s major energy source, the coal sector contributes to a significant portion of China’s greenhouse gas emissions, and the industry faces huge pressure in relation to saving energy and reducing carbon emissions. Considering Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure database as the basic retrieval source, this paper presents the status and hot spots reported in studies on the carbon emissions of the coal mining industry. The results reveal that the scientific outcomes of these studies in this field have increased sharply in the last 5 years. China University of Mining and Technology and the China Coal Research Institute are outstanding research institutes regarding this research topic. The subject distribution suggested the studies on the carbon emissions of the coal mining sector have developed into an interdisciplinary field, which includes the coal mining technology, industrial economy, management and environment. The related hot spots indicate that the energy consumed during the mining process, coal mine gas, sustainable plans for abandoned coal mines and utilization of coal gangue are the indexes for low-carbon development of the coal mining industry, which is also significant for mine disaster prevention. It should be highlighted that the coal spontaneous combustion during the coal mining process and the coal production structure represented by the number of coal mines and the minimum capacity requirement could be important factors for achieving future carbon emission reductions in the coal mining sector.