Impact of carbon intensity and energy security constraints on China's coal import

Abstract

Logistic and Gaussian Curves are adopted in this article to predict the coal production peak for Shanxi province, Henan province as well as the whole of China. According to the prediction based on the basic coal reserve data, coal production in China will reach its peak in the 2030s while that of Shanxi and Henan provinces will be achieved by the 2040s and 2020s respectively. This article also assesses the influential factors of China's coal peak and revises the forecast of Lin and Liu (2010) about China's coal demand by taking the CO2 intensity constraint into consideration, and then predicting the corresponding coal import. The results show that China would import 983 million tonnes of coal in 2020; which takes as high as 27% of China's total coal consumption. This article demonstrates that even if China fulfills CO2 intensity constraint, the country's energy situation would still be grim as a result of its high GDP growth rate. Therefore, China has to consider both CO2 intensity and energy security constraints when establishing strategic energy plan. Finally, this article suggests an adjustment of energy structure by which those constraints can be addressed and further assesses the effect of the adjusted energy structure.