China to cap annual coal output at 4.1 billion tonnes by 2025

China's annual coal output will stand at no higher than 4.1 billion tonnes 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 tonnes in 2020, said a report issued by the China National Coal Association on Wednesday.

Aerial photo taken on May 22, 2020 shows a bulk carrier loading cargoes at a newly built coal berth of Caofeidian Port in Tangshan, north China's Hebei Province. (Xinhua/Yang Shiyao)

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 tonnes at the end of 2025, it said.

Mergers and acquisitions will be encouraged amid efforts to eliminate backward coal production capacity in the next five years and 10 super large coal enterprises will be established each with an annual output of 100 million tonnes, it said.

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 tonnes of annual coal output capacity had been eliminated, it said.

On the other hand, China has built some 1,200 large and modern coal mines, each with an annual output capacity above 1.2 million tonnes, which contribute about 80 percent of the country's total coal output, the report said.