Why thermal coal imports still have a future into China

In this insight, we outline why imports still have a viable future into China. Beneficial cost of imports and better quality of coal for sulphur and ash are the reasons. For the latter, ultra-low emissions technology has been advanced with 32 GW of coal-plant capacity commissioned employing the technology. As this grows, and toyear-in, year-out perform to the standards required will need a growing proportion of low sulphur, low ash coals - availability of which is scarce domestically.