Chinese Government Reportedly Planning To Block New Coal-Fired Power Plant Development In 15 Regions

8 thoughts on “Chinese Government Reportedly Planning To Block New Coal-Fired Power Plant Development In 15 Regions”

• I wonder why it’s not a general freeze, as in Vietnam? There may be some political theatre here: a selective freeze points the finger at the provincial administrators responsible. The others see the career damage and run for cover.

  It is clear that the Chinese government has badly miscalculated on coal. Dozens of unneeded new coal generating plants are opening, while demand for their output is shrinking as renewables cream off the load, and capacity factors are falling. The structural shift away from heavy industry must have gone faster than expected. 1.3 million coal miners and 500,000 steelworkers will lose their jobs very soon, and need costly retraining and relocation programmes.

  Score one for Hayek: India’s deregulated electricity market meant that for all the government’s gigantic plans for new coal generators, the companies who would have to build them – Reliance, Tata, Adani – were able to sit on their hands and not start big projects that would, as it turns out, have lost them a lot of money.

  • India also carries what I call “second-mover advantage.”

  • “Score one for Hayek”–F.A. Hayek, economist, to be exact:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

  • China’s central government does not have full control over the provincial governments, just like the US federal government does not control the state governments. There is, if you will, *politics* involved in this — I suspect the central government is targeting the provinces where they believe they can make their orders stick.

• Nice–wasn’t the reported planning pipeline around 700 plants? So this would be a cut of around 35%, with the hope that many of the remainder won’t get built, either?

  • It seems like these cuts aren’t going to be one-and-done. If the primary drivers of the coal cutbacks in China are 1) A slowdown in electricity consumption by a maturing economy that is growing slower and shifting to services from industry, 2) that renewables are getting more affordable, and 3) that the government (and really the people in this case) cannot tolerate the air pollution. All three drivers are going to continue to drive coal consumption down. Ironically, the possible success of EVs could become a lifeline for coal at some point.

    • 4) China has stated that they intend to be a leading country in the fight against climate change.

      • 5) China has a fabulously ambitious long-term (through mid-century) plan to solve energy problems and simultaneously fight climate change, which cleantechnica, surprisingly, has not yet featured:

        http://nextbigfuture.com/2016/03/china-proposes-50-trillion-global-uhv.html
        March 31, 2016
        China proposes $50+ trillion Global UHV grid connecting all power generation including massive wind farm at the North Pole by 2050

        http://www.powermag.com/china-rolls-out-proposal-for-worldwide-grid/?pagenum=1
        China Rolls Out Proposal for Worldwide Grid
        02/25/2016

        http://www.zyelec.com/en/Show_news.asp?id=641
        China is building 7 ultra high voltage (UHV) projects
        2015-12-3

        http://grenatec.com/a-100-trillion-global-energy-internet-by-2050/
        A $100 Trillion Global Energy Internet by 2050?
        January 18, 2016

        http://www.sgcc.com.cn/ywlm/mediacenter/corporatenews/10/329789.shtml
        It’s about Time to Construct Global “Electricity High-speed Network”
        Released on: 2015-10-13

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