LOW-CARBON TRANSFORMATION OF CHINA’S COAL-FIRED POWER INDUSTRY: CURRENT SITUATION INSIGHTS AND TREND PROSPECTS

Considering the importance of global climate change mitigation, this paper focuses on the low-carbon transformation of China's coal-fired power industry. China's coal-fired power industry is large-scale. The geographical distribution of power plants is uneven, and the technical level shows an unbalanced pattern. The existing units are mainly those with capacities of 300-600MW and 600-1000MW, while most of the newly added units are advanced ones with high parameters. Although the proportion of coal-fired power installed capacity has decreased to 36.9% due to new energy, it still plays a crucial role in power supply. Clean coal technologies, such as ultra-supercritical units, have developed well, and technologies like green ammonia co-firing and CCUS have also made good progress. Coal-fired power is of vital importance in ensuring power security, system regulation, centralized heating, and reducing energy consumption costs. In terms of policies, the "1+N" system and local policies promote the low-carbon transformation.