Coal news and updates

China’s Guangdong to ban new coal-fired power plants and plant expansions

China’s Guangdong province will ban the construction or expansion of coal-fired power plants and company-owned captive power stations anywhere in the province as part of a wider crackdown on energy-intensive industries, the provincial regulator Guangdong Development and Reform Commission said in a notice dated Sept. 26.

The move by one of China’s most industrialized provinces underscores the pace of power sector decarbonization in the country and is likely one of the first crackdowns of its kind on the blanket construction and expansion of coal-fired capacity by a major province.

It also comes at a time when several Chinese provinces have imposed electricity rationing in critical sectors in recent weeks due to efforts to conserve fuel stocks ahead of the critical winter heating season and record high coal prices in international markets. The power shortages have rekindled debate about the need for coal-fired capacity and balancing it with decarbonization efforts.

Guangdong also introduced a new round of power rationing for industrial users, cutting supply to four or five days a week, although the deputy director of Guangdong Energy Bureau said this is not related to the dual control targets, according to a GDRC report Sept. 27.

The GDRC’s policy, if implemented, could lead to a significant shift toward alternative fuels like renewables and gas-fired power generation in one of China’s largest gas-fired power producing provinces.

Under the new policy measures, the GDRC said it would curb the development of projects that use large amounts of energy and have high carbon emissions, and closely monitor the operations of energy-intensive enterprises.

The notice was released after the province was issued a warning by the country’s top policy planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, on Aug. 17, in which it alerted 10 provinces and regions that they had failed to meet the government’s energy consumption and carbon emission control targets in the first half of 2021. The 10 were Guangdong, Jiangsu, Yunnan, Fujian, Shaanxi, Guangxi, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Hubei.