China Plans Major Slowdown of New Coal-to-Gas Projects in Bid to Cut Emissions

China will exclude additional coal-to-natural-gas projects from its coal industry's next five-year development plan, according to local media reports.

China Energy News, a state-run newspaper, cited a policymaker Monday as saying that China will complete the construction of approved coal-to-natural-gas plants but will not approve new projects until 2020, aiming to keep its coal-based synthetic natural gas production capacity to 15 billion cubic meters at the end of the decade.

Coal-based synthetic natural gas -- a product of converting coal to natural gas through a gasification process -- has become a hit in the Chinese coal industry since the country's demand for cleaner fuels soared last year because of mounting pressure to clean up air.

According to a 2014 study from Greenpeace, China currently operates two coal-to-natural-gas demonstration projects, but there are 48 other plants under construction or in the planning stage.  Once completed by 2020, those plants will produce 225 billion cubic meters of coal-fueled synthetic natural gas annually.

But additional buildup of coal-to-natural-gas projects could also create an environmental nightmare because producing the gas will emit huge amounts of carbon dioxide and worsen the water crisis in China's arid western regions.

Experts say that if Chinese policymakers suspend coal-to-natural-gas project approval, the planned projects will not be able to move ahead.  In other words, China's coal-to-natural-gas boom will end before it has started.

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