Authorities in China have ordered 13 provincial governments to stop issuing approvals for new coal-fired power plants, according to reports.
The Southern Energy Observer, a magazine run by the state-owned China Southern Power Grid Corp., reported in March that the move had been put in place until 2018 in regions where power generating capacity is already in surplus.
The construction of approved coal-fired power projects in 15 regions has also been halted, according to the report, which was later confirmed to be correct by China's National Energy Administration (NEA), Reuters reported.
The regions affected by the policies include the major coal-producing regions of Shanxi and Inner Mongolia. NEA said earlier in 2016 that utilization rates at China's power plants were at their lowest since 1978 because of a slowdown in demand growth and continued rapid expansion of coal-fired power capacity.
Greenpeace said that the new rules would affect up to 250 coal-fired power plants with a combined capacity of up to 170 GW. However it said that more than 300 GW of capacity could go ahead as planned and come on-line in the next few years.
China's total generation capacity reached 1485.8 GW at the end of February, up 11.8 per cent year on year, according to the latest figures. Thermal power, which mostly consists of coal-fired capacity, rose 9.4 per cent on the year to 1003.8 GW.
In spite of this, coal use in China continues to decline. The country's National Bureau of Statistics says that coal consumption declined for the second year in a row in 2015, falling by 3.7 per cent over 2014 levels.
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