JINCHENG, China - Just as coal fueled the steam engines that settled the American West and electrified our cities around the turn of 20th century, coal is building a new China.

Much of the world got its first glimpse of a Las Vegas-style new megalopolis via television during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, now home to nearly 18 million people.

But what couldn't be conveyed on TV was the choking air pollution that rings Beijing and many other Chinese cities. The air here tastes like the air in a change house at a Wyoming coal mine.

And far away from the spotlight of the Olympic Games, hundreds of thousands of Chinese toil in underground coal mines to feed an urban economic boom that requires about one new coal-fired power plant per week.

Last month, 78 miners died in a methane explosion at the Tunlan coal mine north of here in Shanxi Province, continuing a tragic safety record that kills more than 3,000 Chinese miners each year.

Yet there's an awakening that began several years ago in China. Here in rural Shanxi Province, Chinese citizens are demanding safer mines, cleaner air and new economic opportunities that have so far eluded much of rural China.

Shanxi has put out a call to the international community to deploy cleaner coal technologies here - urgently.

"They've seen the worst of coal. Now they want to see the best of it," said David Wendt of Jackson Hole. "They are so eager for the policy and the technology experience we can bring."

Wyomingite's mission

Wendt is president of the Jackson Hole Center for Global Affairs. He had just arrived here on the day of the Tunlan mine tragedy, along with several coal industry experts.

It's a continuation of several years of diplomatic work by Wendt promoting cleaner coal policies and technologies in China.

For this particular trip, Wendt organized a group of 25 international experts to attend the "Sino-U.S. New Energy Sci-Tech Forum and Conference on Coal Mine Methane Recovery and Utilization." The trip was funded on the U.S. side by the Environmental Protection Agency, which has worked with China on these issues for about 15 years under the Methane to Markets Partnership.

For more than three decades, Wendt has promoted international awareness and cooperation on global policy issues, beginning at the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia in the 1970s. In 1998, Wendt joined Idaho State University's international program, before launching the Jackson Hole Center for Global Affairs.

Wendt explained that he met his wife, Olivia Meigs, while working dude ranches in Jackson Hole in the 1960s, and they always wanted to return to the area permanently.

Wendt became interested in climate change in the 1990s, and immediately understood that China would be ground zero for the issue because of its enormity in population and its enormity in the need to develop its vast coal resource.

"I knew it was the 900-pound gorilla and it would soon straddle the earth in terms of its environmental impact," Wendt said.

Why Wyo cares

Both the United States and China are coal super-powers, relying on the same technical expertise required to dig, ship and convert coal into energy.

The countries also share the same atmosphere, so the same international pressures brought upon China to clean up its coal-fired energy regime are also brought upon the United States.

That's why the Wyoming Legislature is leading the nation in defining the legal framework for carbon sequestration: to protect the future of its coal industry, realizing that the national and international call to address climate change will result in federal regulation of coal emissions.

"Pollution is a global issue," said Wyoming state Sen. Grant Larson, R-Jackson. "We can do all the things we're working on in Wyoming, but unless we can get cooperation from China, it will make it very, very difficult to get where the world wants to be on clean air."

China is the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases. Researchers at the University of California estimate that China's 2010 carbon emissions will be 600 million metric tons more than its 2000 level, effectively wiping out the estimated 116 million metric tons of pledged carbon reductions by all Kyoto Protocol signatories.

But whether the motive here in Shanxi Province is for economic development or for the wives and children of Chinese coal miners doesn't really matter. It is China's role in climate change that holds sway over all aspects of life across the globe.

The good news is that Shanxi Province and many others in China are asking - in some cases, pleading - for the international community to deploy the types of "green" technology that will help China prosper while shrinking its greenhouse gas emissions.

Cliff Mallett, executive general manager of Carbon Energy Limited in Australia, put it bluntly: "If China doesn't fix their system, it doesn't matter what the rest of us do."

Pressure and opportunity

Despite international bidding, China has refused to cap its CO2 emissions - as has the United States - instead seeking political stability in coal's power to bring millions out of poverty.

Yet at the same time, this policy threatens the very stability Chinese government officials seek. There's a new awareness among the Chinese people of coal's environmental consequences.

Chinese cities are shrouded in pollution. Citizens will admit off the record that what the national government fears the most is an "uprising" of the millions upon millions of citizens who have not yet tasted China's new wealth, but are forced to breathe the pollution that's building it.

And with the seemingly incessant tragedy of dying coal miners, local governments - Shanxi in particular - are bringing their own pressure to bear.

Wendt said the provincial government of Shanxi, along with the city of Jincheng, has taken a leadership role in making the capture and use of methane gas a priority in terms of both policy and technology.

"Shanxi is really the frontier of policy innovation in coal for all of China," Wendt said.

The effort has begun to produce results. Jincheng recently achieved a 60 percent utilization of coal mine methane, double its set target for its current five-year plan. That means methane gas that threatened to kill coal miners and add to climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions now supplies some 800,000 Jincheng households with home heating and cooking gas, as well as a supply for glass and pottery manufacturing.

Most all taxis and buses in Jincheng run on compressed natural gas from coal mine methane.

In this way, stemming coal mine methane emissions is as much a boon to climate change efforts as an economic boon in these low-income rural areas of China.

Gaining traction

At the end of the Sino-U.S. New Energy forum, Wendt signed the "Jincheng Declaration," along with signatories Wang Maoshe, mayor of Jincheng Municipal People's Government, and Jim Marshall, executive vice president of U.S.-based Raven Ridge Resources.

The declaration is nonbinding, yet not politically impotent either - particularly here in Jincheng. Wendt said that with Mayor Maoshe's signature, capturing coal mine methane and utilizing it for energy becomes a mandate in this coal region and paves the way for other regions of China to do the same.

"Like us here in Wyoming, they're trying to develop a strategy with energy to realize new economic opportunities with environmental management," Wendt said.

Larson, the Wyoming state senator from Jackson, twice traveled with Wendt to Shanxi Province during early missions to push coal gasification technologies.

Larson said that on his first trip, some in the Chinese government were reluctant to embrace the effort. When he returned a couple of years later, there was a stark difference in attitude.

"The attitude was almost 180-degree reversal," Larson said in a phone interview. "I think it was some recognition in the central government that they had a problem. Shanxi has always had desires to make it better, and being there you'd understand why."

Coal consumers

* China produces about 2.6 billion tons of coal annually, while the United States produces about 1.1 billion tons annually.

* Total world production of coal is 5.5 billion tons, which means China'accounts for about 47 percent of world coal production, and the United States accounts for 20 percent.

Connected by Coal

A three-day series examining issues that link China and Wyoming

Today:

* Carbon, climate and cooperation

Monday:

* Turning a killer into a resource

Tuesday:

* Getting down to business

Energy reporter Dustin Bleizeffer can be reached at (307) 577-6069 or dustin.bleizeffer@trib.com.