(Yicai Global) March 2 -- China will not approve any new coal-fired power stations simply for the purpose of generating electricity, according to a document published on the website of the National Energy Administration last week.

The new policy will be implemented to make sure the world’s second-largest economy can meet its carbon peak and neutrality goals on time, the energy regulator said in response to a proposal made to the country’s top political and legislative bodies during their annual meeting in March last year.

While strictly monitoring coal-powered projects, the government will still commission a handful of coal-burning electric power plants to ensure the operational safety of the national grid as well as complement newly build wind and solar power projects, it said.

It will ask existing coal power plants to make their electricity generating functions more flexible, such as to enable them to stabilize the national grid’s power supply and to cooperate closely with new energy power stations whose output can be very unstable.

The government plans to issue new policies to make sure that those who successfully transform their power plants are able to profit from these businesses with the state grid or new energy power stations.

The administration will also encourage the upgrading of coal power stations in other respects, such as introducing green technology knowhow, improving operating efficiency, installing carbon capture, utilization and storage devices and cutting energy consumption per unit of power generation, it added.

The industry was the first to be added to the country’s carbon emissions trading scheme in order to better harness the emissions problem and to help the industry get closer to its goal of greenhouse gas emissions peaking by 2030, it added.

Cogeneration projects, which produce both electricity and heat, can be used to heat urban buildings and reduce their carbon emissions, Sun Liping, director of the Energy Finance Research Center of the International Institute for Green Finance at the Central University of Finance and Economics, told Yicai Global.

China will not stop coal power plants from taking part in cogeneration nor trigeneration projects, which have power generation as well as heating and cooling functions, said Wang Weiquan, general-secretary of the Energy and Environment Professional Committee under the China Energy Research Society.

Coal-generated power accounted for 56 percent of the country’s total energy consumption in 2021, down 0.9 percentage point from 2020, according to statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Feb. 28. While clean energy such as natural gas, hydropower, nuclear, wind and solar energy made up 25.5 percent, a gain of 1.2 percentage point.

The country holds the Two Sessions, an annual meeting of the National People's Congress and the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, in early March every year. During the sessions, members of the National Committee of the CPPCC can make proposals on different issues to the government. Government agencies must respond to the proposals within six months.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor