The peak of coal consumption is an important milestone in the development of some developed countries. Take Britain and the United States for example, they first experienced the transition from the coal age to the oil and gas age, and began to gradually enter the era of clean energy. China is actively ending the coal era, shortening the oil and gas era and moving towards the clean energy era ahead of schedule.

Compared with Britain and America, China has reached the peak of coal consumption at a lower stage of development. In terms of purchasing power, the wealth of China is lower than that of British and American coal 10%( 1956) and 75%(2007). Considering the degree of industrialization, huge population and coal-based resource endowment in China, it is closely related to effective policy guidance to reach the peak so quickly.

The 3% increase of coal consumption in China may be an overestimation. This forecast is based on two data of China Coal Industry Association (CCIA) and National Energy Administration in the first half of 20 17, when the coal consumption in China did rebound. China Coal Industry Association predicts that coal consumption will increase by 5%, and National Energy Administration predicts that it will increase by 1%. The difference between these two predictions is 65438+ 1 100 million tons.

The GCP report seems to simply average the two data. However, this treatment is not in line with the general method of annual comparison. Consumption data of China Coal Industry Association is not used for official data reporting. First of all, the association only contains data of large coal producers, which is different from smaller coal producers. In addition, its estimate of coal inventory is somewhat different from the national statistics.

In 20 16, according to the data released by China Coal Industry Association, the national coal inventory decreased by about 240 million tons, which made the estimation of the change of total consumption 2 percentage points higher than the official data. Therefore, the data of China Coal Industry Association is very representative when studying enterprises above designated size, but it is not the best data source to estimate coal consumption, especially the annual comparison.