The carbon-neutral policy will promote the improvement of coal utilization efficiency and low-carbon production, and coal chemical industry is expected to accelerate its development.
On the one hand, burning one ton of coal (standard coal) can produce about 2.77 tons of carbon emissions. According to China's coal consumption of 2.804 billion tons of standard coal, the corresponding carbon emission is 7.77 billion tons, which means that China's carbon emission mainly comes from coal burning. To achieve carbon neutrality, it is necessary to reduce the carbon emissions of coal consumption.
On the other hand, China is rich in coal resources. From the perspective of energy security, coal resources will still play an important role in China's energy transformation, and the probability of a sharp drop in demand in the short term is low.
In the case of stable demand, carbon neutrality is expected to affect the coal industry in three aspects:
First, the improvement of coal utilization efficiency is expected to save coal consumption. China's coal (about 52%) is mainly used for power generation, but at present the average utilization efficiency of coal and electricity in China is only 35%. The low efficiency is mainly due to the fact that 56% of China's coal-fired power still comes from subcritical power plants with low efficiency, while the coal-fired power in supercritical (efficiency 38%) and ultra-supercritical (efficiency 45%) power plants with high efficiency accounts for relatively low proportion, accounting for 25% and 19% respectively. By improving the utilization efficiency of coal in power plants, coal consumption can be reduced and carbon emission reduction can be directly realized. According to the average coal utilization efficiency of 50% in 2030, it can save 800 million tons of standard coal (about 29% of current consumption) and reduce carbon emissions by about 2.22 billion tons.
Second, the pressure of low-carbon production makes the industry's production capacity tend to be stable. The carbon emission in coal mining mainly comes from the direct emission of mining equipment and the emission of coalbed methane during mining. Coal enterprises need to reduce emissions by reducing high-carbon energy, increasing clean energy and developing carbon reduction technologies. Therefore, carbon neutrality will bring some cost pressure to coal enterprises, or lead to a slowdown in new production capacity, and the production capacity of the coal industry is expected to remain stable in the future.
Third, the coal chemical industry is expected to accelerate its development. Coal chemical industry refers to the production mode of making chemical products with coal, and about 7% of coal in China is used in coal chemical industry. Because the route of coal-based chemicals leads to some carbon elements entering products, it naturally has the ability to reduce carbon emissions. Therefore, the establishment of clean and efficient coal chemical industry with low carbon cycle is expected to continuously increase the proportion of coal chemical industry in coal consumption and drive the low-carbon development of coal industry.