Coal use needs to rapidly decline in the global energy mix in the next few decades in order to meet the Paris climate goals of keeping global warming well below 2-degrees Celsius. In emerging economies such as India (the second largest producer and consumer of coal) this would entail reducing long-term coal dependency. Prior work has focused on a coal transition in India from a techno-economic point of view, yet little attention has been given to the socio-economic dimensions of this transition. This is in part due to lack of availability of datasets required for such analysis. The first step in understanding the socio-economic dimensions of a coal transition in India is to understand the scale of current socio-economic dependency on coal at the sub-national level. We contribute to this literature by creating a novel dataset comprised of all 459 operational coal mines in India, using multiple Right to Information Act applications (India’s Freedom of Information Act) and then combining this dataset with coal company wise employment factors to estimate direct job numbers at the district level (a sub-administrative unit). We find that coal is produced in 51 districts in 13 states in India with large variations in employment numbers among these districts. While Korba district in Chhattisgarh state is the highest coal producing district, Dhanbad district in Jharkhand state is home to the highest number of coal mining workers. This is the first attempt at understanding the socio-economic dependency on coal at a district level and future work could focus on quantifying other district level socio-economic indicators such as coal related revenues. The new dataset and the results of this paper will be useful for scholars conducting future work on coal transitions and related topics.

为了实现将全球变暖幅度控制在2摄氏度以下的巴黎气候目标，在未来几十年中，煤炭的使用需要在全球能源结构中迅速下降。在印度等新兴经济体（煤炭的第二大生产国和消费国）中，这将需要减少长期对煤炭的依赖。从技术经济的角度来看，先前的工作集中在印度的煤炭转型，但是很少有人关注这种转型的社会经济层面。部分原因是缺乏此类分析所需的数据集。理解印度煤炭转型的社会经济层面的第一步是要了解当前国家对煤炭的社会经济依赖程度。通过使用多个《知情权法》应用（印度的《信息自由法》），然后将该数据集与煤炭公司明智的就业因素相结合，以估算直接工作人数，我们创建了一个由印度所有459个运营煤矿组成的新颖数据集，从而为这一文献做出了贡献在地区一级（下级行政单位）。我们发现，印度13个州的51个地区生产煤炭，这些地区的就业人数差异很大。恰蒂斯加尔邦的科巴区是煤炭产量最高的地区，而贾坎德邦州的丹巴德地区却是煤炭开采工人数量最多的地方。这是了解地区对煤炭的社会经济依赖性的首次尝试，未来的工作可能会集中于量化其他地区层面的社会经济指标，例如与煤炭相关的收入。新的数据集和本文的结果将对学者进行有关煤炭过渡和相关主题的未来工作很有用。