[Forward] Moving air pollution control to the front line; clean coal utilization is in the spotlight”

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Accelerating the clean and efficient use of coal is of great significance for promoting green development in China, reducing the generation and emission of air pollutants, and improving the quality of the atmospheric environment. **The Energy Bureau released the \"Action Plan for Clean and Efficient Utilization of Coal (2015-2020)\), putting the clean use of coal at the forefront. Coal is the primary energy source and an important industrial raw material in our country. In recent years, the coal industry has seen significant development: coal production has increased rapidly, and productivity levels have risen substantially, making a notable contribution to the healthy development of the economy and society. However, issues such as extensive methods of coal utilization, low energy efficiency, and severe pollution have not been fundamentally resolved. In the coming period, coal will still play a dominant role in primary energy consumption. To implement the outcomes of the sixth meeting of the Central Financial and Economic Leadership Group and the first meeting of the new **Energy Committee, it is necessary to give equal importance to promoting the clean and efficient use of coal and to the development of clean energy sources. In the future, **focus will be placed on four key sectors where coal is consumed in industry: coking, industrial furnaces, coal chemical processing, and industrial boilers. Clean production technology upgrades will be implemented in these areas to reduce coal consumption and pollutant generation at the source. At the same time, efforts will be made to advance coal chemical processing toward more efficient and advanced methods, thereby achieving industrial upgrading. **To this end, financial resources for pollution control at all levels will be coordinated to provide stronger support. Extensive coal combustion is considered to be the main cause of smog. Data shows that 70% of national particulate emissions, 85% of sulfur dioxide emissions, and 67% of nitrogen oxide emissions stem from the combustion of fossil fuels, primarily coal. However, the characteristic of our country’s energy resources – an abundance of coal but a scarcity of oil and gas – means that, for a considerable period to come, coal will remain the dominant energy source. In 2014, coal production was 3.87 billion tons, accounting for 72% of primary energy production ； Coal consumption was 4.16 billion tons, accounting for 66.2% of primary energy consumption. It is estimated that by 2020, China’s total energy demand will reach 5.2 billion tons of standard coal, of which 4.7 billion tons will be coal, accounting for about 60%. Coal will continue to play a key role in ensuring a stable supply of energy. Experts believe that, while improving energy efficiency, reducing energy consumption, and increasing the supply of other energy sources, the clean utilization of coal will be the main approach for China to combat air pollution in the future. From the perspective of the progress in addressing coal pollution, since the 12th Five-Year Plan, the coal-fired power plants, which are the main consumers of coal, have had their units equipped with desulfurization, denitrification, and dust removal systems, enabling them to meet the established emission standards; thus, the effort to control pollution from coal-fired power generation has reached a temporary conclusion for now. Against this backdrop, the reduction of pollutants from the thousands of coal-fired industrial boilers across the country, whose pollution contribution is second only to that of thermal power plants, naturally becomes a new focus for policy efforts in pollution control. From a market perspective, the market for desulfurization, denitrification, and dust removal in thermal power generation had reached near saturation by the end of last year. It is expected that the areas where orders related to air pollution control are likely to surge will shift to various sub-sectors related to the clean use of coal, and it is anticipated that a series of new policies aimed at pollution control will be introduced in the future. 2. Attention is being paid to front-end management in FogMai. The focus of FogMai’s management has shifted from thermal power plants to industrial and domestic applications, which aligns with the trend in environmental protection towards \"prevention at the source\" rather than \"treatment at the end stage\". According to the latest theories on pollution control, preventing pollution at its source represents the ultimate approach for environmental protection to move from addressing symptoms to tackling root causes, transitioning from controlling new emissions to achieving control over both new and existing emissions. Therefore, the clean use of coal has, in the eyes of many industry experts, risen to a prominent position as a solution that addresses not only the symptoms but also the root causes of air pollution. The clean utilization of coal is actually a concept related to an industrial chain, which encompasses coal (and coalbed methane) extraction and washing in the upstream stage of the coal industry, transportation, power generation, metallurgy, and chemical production in the midstream stage, as well as the treatment and recycling of \"three wastes\" and the capture and storage of carbon dioxide in the downstream stage. Zhang Shaoqiang explained that, within the entire industrial chain, efforts to make coal cleaner can focus on three aspects: first is the washing and processing of coal before it is fed into the furnace, which takes place at the earliest stage of the process ； The second is the purification of furnaces, such as low-nitrogen combustion, calcium injection in circulating fluidized bed furnaces, retrofitting of small and medium-sized coal powder industrial boilers and water-coal slurry boilers, and the application of clean gasification technologies ； Third is the treatment of flue gas through desulfurization, denitration, dust removal, etc. at the end stage. Data show that for coal used as fuel, coal washing can remove 50%-80% of the ash and 50%-60% of the total sulfur content in coal. With a coal washing cost of around 8-20 yuan per ton, this approach reduces the pollution caused by coal to the atmosphere, making it economically viable. Regarding the purification of coal in boilers, Zhang Shaoqiang explained that low-nitrogen combustion is already widely used in the power generation sector, and circulating fluidized bed technology for generating electricity from low-calorific-value coal has also been commercialized ； In the industrial sector, coal-fired industrial boilers are also being used on a large scale. In the field of end-of-pipe flue gas treatment, development in China is relatively advanced, and relevant support policies have been introduced; the feed-in tariff for coal-fired power generation plants includes three types of environmental protection charges related to desulfurization, denitrification, and dust removal. Compared to end-of-pipe treatment in an era of prosperity, the development of front-end coal washing and furnace cleaning industries is still in its infancy. However, if the front end does not handle things through more economical methods and instead places most of the load on the end stage, then the investment in equipment and the operating costs for treatment at that end stage will increase exponentially. The cost of desulfurization in coal washing is 8-10 times lower than that of flue gas desulfurization at the later stage. This year, Environment Minister Chen Jining stated that as innovation capabilities improve and policies are implemented more effectively in a integrated manner, the process of environmental governance in China will accelerate further. Currently, waste management projects are mainly focused on end-of-pipe treatment. If we look at the technological developments over the past few decades, the progress in technologies aimed at conservation – such as those for saving energy, electricity, and water, as well as technologies for wastewater treatment, and technologies for improving production efficiency – has been far greater than the progress in end-of-pipe treatment methods. But these dividends have not been realized. With the frequent occurrence of hazy weather and the ongoing advancement in air pollution control efforts, new investment opportunities in this field are set to emerge. The cleaning of coal, particularly at the initial stages of processing, is likely to become a key focus in air pollution control efforts.