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

April 4th, 2016 by James Ayre

The Chinese government may finally be making strong moves against further coal energy development in the country, going by recent reports — with news of the blocking of development of new coal-fired power plants in 15 regions apparently having been confirmed by the country’s National Energy Administration.

The regions in question — according to the Southern Energy Observer: Shanxi, Shandong, Inner Mongolia, Hubei, Guangdong, and Yunnan, among others — saw regulators block development owing to worries about growing overcapacity, reportedly.

The move will lead to substantial carry-on impacts considering that, according to Greenpeace, at least 250 coal-fired power projects will be affected — altogether totaling more than 170 gigawatts (GW) of project electricity generation capacity.

A related move was also recently made by the Chinese National Energy Administration (NEA) that saw regulators postpone new coal-mine developments in the country until at least 2019 — partly owing to overcapacity, and partly owing to worsening air pollution problems in much of the region.

These moves are in parallel to other recent moves made by authorities in China to speed up the rate of renewables adoption — in particular, the NEA recently announced plans for a tripling of solar photovoltaic (PV) generation capacity in the country through 2020.

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