China will continue to strengthen the basic supporting role of coal in energy security, and keep boosting clean energies to meet carbon goals, said China's state planner on March 5.

The world's largest energy consumer has enhanced its reliance on coal as clean energies showed unsteady supply. It suffered a crunch from hydropower generation in the scorching summer last year due to lower-than-usual precipitation in southwestern China.

China's energy security also faced more challenges from drastic changes in global energy price and supply patterns since the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Europe's rush for alternative gas and coal supplies in ex-Russian markets has led to lower availability and higher costs for China last year.

In 2022, coal contributed to 56.2% of China's energy consumption, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

China boosted raw coal production to 4.56 billion tonnes in 2022, a marked growth of 10.5% year on year, said the NBS in a statistical communique on Feb 28. Its coal output is expected to stay at a high level in 2023 due to the extended supply boost drive.

As of end-2022, China had 1.33 TW of coal-fired power generating capacity, rising 2.7% on the year. Yet this logged the lowest growth compared with solar and wind power capacity increase at 28.1% and 11.2%, indicating China's continued steps to expand clean energies, showed data from the National Energy Administration.

China's power project investment totaled 720.8 billion yuan in 2022, up 22.8% on the year. Thermal power investment grew by 28.4% from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, the state planner also stressed the importance of ramping up domestic oil and gas supply.

(Writing by Tammy Yang  Editing by Harry Huo)
For any questions, please contact us by inquiry@fwenergy.com or +86-351-7219322.

Share this article

Connect with us