The ongoing growth of coal-fired power generation was key to this dynamic. China’s National Bureau of Statistics reports that the power output of thermal power plants (TPPs) in the country increased by 1.5% in 2024, reaching 6.34 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh). The overall share of TPPs, including gas- and oil-fired power plants, in China’s energy mix rose to 67%. According to Global Energy Monitor, a total of 30.5 GW of coal-fired TPPs was launched across China in 2024, with a mere 13.5 GW of coal-fired capacity brought into operation in the rest of the world.
The launch of new capacities is meant to, among other things, reduce the environmental footprint of coal-fired power generation. By the end of 2024, precisely one-third of the capacity of China’s operating coal-fired TPPs was represented by the so-called ultra-supercritical coal-fired TPPs, which help save coal during power generation thanks to their high efficiency (44–46%). Meanwhile, the share of ultra-supercritical TPPs among those under construction reached 96%, while that of subcritical power plants, the least eco-friendly type of TPP with an efficiency of 33–37%, fell to zero.
Due to the crisis in the real estate market, China’s steel production contracted by 1.7% last year (to a little over 1 billion tons). Nevertheless, imports of coking coal, which is used in metallurgy, climbed by 20% in 2024 (to 122.1 million tons). Mongolia has been the largest supplier of coking coal to the Chinese market for the fourth consecutive year, its exports to China going up by 5% (to 56.8 million tons) in 2024. The availability of transport infrastructure is a major factor: in 2022, Mongolia completed the construction of a railway line from the Tavan Tolgoi coal mine in the south of the country to the border with China.
Import growth is supported by the policy of increasing commercial coal reserves, which China has been implementing since 2021, when a number of domestic coal-fired power plants faced a feedstock shortage amid rising energy demand. Under current regulations, the level of commercial reserves must reach at least 15% of demand. Since China’s overall coal consumption exceeded 4,900 million tons last year (as reported by the IEA), this is above the annual volume of imports.
However, China’s coal imports are bound to stabilize in the coming years, both due to the large-scale launch of renewable energy facilities and nuclear power plants, as well as the development of domestic coal mining: according to the IEA, investments in coal mining in the country skyrocketed by 65% to $100 billion between 2017 and 2023 (no later data are available).
