Beijing Expands Coverage of North China’s Winter Clean Heating

China’s MOFCOM, MEE, MOURD and NEA issued a formal announcement on July 26 to expand the subsidiary coverage of the winter clean heating plan in North China from 2+26 cities area to 2+39, adding Zhangjiakou City and Fen-Wei Plain (12 cities included).

Beijing picked 11 cites from the 2+26 cities area in 2017 for the pilot demonstration of the subsidiary, giving 21.9 billion CNY from the central government and 69.7 billion CNY from local governments in total for three years, and the whole project was expected to attract investment over 200 billion CNY. From 2017 May, the central government’s subsidiary coverage expanded to the whole 2+26 cities area, with 1 billion CNY level for the municipality, 0.7 for the provincial capital and 0.5 for the prefecture-level city.

The pilot cities were requested to eliminate bulk coal usage at all, replacing with energy type according to local circumstances such as electricity, natural gas, clean coal, oil and others. To avoid a repeat of 2017 winter heating season’s shortages, the government requested local governments at all levels to moderate the demand growth and make plans based on the actual supply and demand fundamentals. Moreover, Beijing indicated that the replacement should be executed only after the new capacity had been put into normal operation, so as to avoid any audacious moves from the local governments.

Note: The 2+26 cities area includes Beijing Municipality, Tianjin Municipality, Hebei Province’s Shijiazhuang, Tangshan, Baoding, Langfang, Cangzhou, Hengshui, Handan and Xingtai cities, Shanxi Province’s Taiyuan, Yangquan, Changzhi and Jincheng cities, Shandong Province’s Jinan, Zibo, Liaocheng, Dezhou, Binzhou, Jining and Heze cities, Henan Province’s Zhengzhou, Xinxiang, Hebi, Anyang, Jiaozuo, Puyang and Kaifeng cities. The Fen-Wei Plain includes Shanxi Province’s Lvliang, Jinzhong, Linfen and Yuncheng cities, Henan Province’s Luoyang and Sanmenxia cities, Shaanxi Province’s Xi’an, Xianyang, Baoji, Tongchuan, Weinan cities and Yangling Demonstration District.