China’s Snowstorms Trigger Alert, Coal-Shipment Boost

China issued a weather alert and increased coal shipments to ensure supply as heavy snow that has blanketed parts of the nation is forecast to continue. At least 30 flights from Beijing airport were canceled.

The alert, designated as level 2, includes 24-hour weather monitoring and warnings, as well as speedy disaster relief, Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Meteorological Administration, said today in a statement on the agency’s Web site. Heavy snow that has covered central and eastern China since mid-January will continue in the coming week, the statement said.
Snowstorms that swept central China’s Hunan, Guizhou, Anhui and Jiangxi were the worst in decades, affecting living and industrial production, the agency said in separate statements. China, which burns coal to generate 78 percent of its electricity, has shut 5 percent of its coal-fired power plants as heavy snowfall and railway congestion delayed coal deliveries.

The “disastrous” weather “will continue in those areas in the coming week, and will continue to disrupt transport, telecommunication transmission, power supplies, living and production,” the meteorological agency said.

In Hunan province, where snowstorms were the worst since 1954, five people had died as of Jan. 25, most factories stopped production and local airports and some highways were closed, the administration said in a separate statement.

China’s central and eastern provinces are home to many metal producers. Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group Co., the nation’s largest copper maker, and Jiangxi Copper Co., the second largest, are based in Anhui and Jiangxi, respectively.

Bloomberg