First 1 GW coal-fired unit at Shanghaimiao comes online

• 4 years ago (2021-12-29)
• David Flin

Asia 1038 Coal 366

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The Guodian Power Shanghaimiao Corporation, part of the state-owned China Energy Investment Corporation , has announced that the first of four 1 GW coal-fired units at Shanghaimiao in the northwest region of Inner Mongolia has entered operation. The facility is the largest coal-fired power plant currently being built in China.

The company said that Unit 1 has been brought online after a testing period of 168 hours. The facility is sited in an area with significant coal reserves and will eventually send power to Shandong province via a long-distance ultra-high-voltage transmission line.

Although China has said that it will reduce its coal-fired power generation in due course, it has also said that this reduction will not start until 2025. In the meantime, it plans to add “significant coal-fired power generation.”

China’s State Grid Corporation has released a report which said that China needs to deploy an additional 150 GW of new coal-fired power generation by the end of 2025, taking China’s coal-fired power capacity to 1230 GW. China currently accounts for more than half of all global coal-fired power generation, and over 30 per cent of all global CO2 emissions.