China’s annual coal output will stand at no higher than 4.1 billion tons by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), after it climbed 1.4 percent year on year to 3.9 billion tons in 2020, a report issued by the China National Coal Association said yesterday.
The number of coal mines will shrink to about 4,000 by the end of 2025 from about 4,700 at the end of 2020, and of the total, more than 1,000 will be equipped with smart mining technology, the report said.
Annual coal consumption will be kept to around 4.2 billion tons at the end of 2025.
Mergers and acquisitions will be pushed amid efforts to eliminate backward coal production capacity and 10 super large coal enterprises will be established each with an annual output of 100 million tons, it added.
The coal sector has been tackling overcapacity in the past five years. By the end of last year, about 5,500 coal mines had been closed and about 1 billion tons of annual coal output capacity had been eliminated.
China has also built some 1,200 large and modern mines, each with an annual output capacity above 1.2 million tons.