How will China's coal industry develop in the future? A quantitative analysis with policy implications

Achieving sound development in China's coal industry is of great significance for ensuring national energy security and achieving the goal of environmental and atmospheric governance. To analyse the present situation in China's coal industry and provide suggestions for its comprehensive development, a Coal Industry Development Index (CIDI) system is declared including 28 secondary indexes associated with 6 dimensions. A minimum-deviation combination weighting method is proposed to obtain more reasonable synthetic index weights than other methods, and a comprehensive evaluation model is constructed based on grey theory and TOPSIS to calculate the CIDI from 2011 to 2019. The results show that the CIDI has a fluctuating upward trend year by year, as the government and enterprises have attached great importance to coal production, and a series of measures have promoted the intelligent and safe development of China's coal industry. However, clean and green production first fluctuates and then rises, indicating that coal industry has not fully realized clean production and efficient utilization and is still the key controlled object of carbon emission reduction. Therefore, investments in the cultivation of coal market entity, resource guarantees and innovation-driven development ought to be strengthened in the future.