Beijing Municipality rolled out the city’s ecological and environmental protection plan for the 2021-2025 period, or the 14th Five-Year Plan (FYP) period, at a press conference on December 8, as reported by bjx.com on the next day. The plan focusing on carbon reduction outlined that over the next five years, the capital will further reduce coal-fired power use, limit natural gas consumption, promote the use of electric cars, build electricity systems based on new energy, and increase the share of renewable energy in total power consumption. Precisely, the municipality set caps for coal and natural gas consumption at 1m tons and 20bn cubic meters a year, stating that the city would not use coal unless in emergency circumstances.

Beijing reduced its coal consumption from 11.65m tons in 2015 to 1.73m tons in 2020, while the proportion of coal in the city’s energy mix dropped from 13.7% to 1.9%. During the same period, it raised the natural gas use from 14.5bn to 19.0bn cubic meters. The city aims to further reduce coal use by modifying the existing coal-powered heating facilities in rural areas. Additionally, it expects renewable energy to account for 14.4% of the city’s power consumption in 2025, from the share of 6.6% in 2015 and 7.9% in 2019. However, Beijing’s green transition counts on interprovincial electricity transmission. Beijing imported 10,950 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of green power from other provinces in 2019, taking up around 9.4% of its overall electricity consumption. Under the new plan for the 2021-2025 period, Beijing will hit a power receiving capacity of 43,000 megawatts (MW) in 2025, from 31,000 MW by the end of 2019.

Sources:

https://news.bjx.com.cn/html/20211209/1192576.shtml

http://www.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2021-01/21/c_1127006673.htm

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/china/electricity-consumption/cn-electricity-consumption-beijing

https://guangfu.bjx.com.cn/news/20201124/1117623.shtml