BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s fossil-fuelled power generation, mostly from coal, rose in July to the highest level since August 2024, official data showed on Friday, as record-breaking heat pushed power demand to record highs across large swathes of China.
Fossil-fuelled power generation, known in China as thermal power and generated mostly by coal with a small amount from natural gas, rose 4.3% in July from a year earlier to 602 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Thermal power use is usually the highest in summer and winter, when cooling and heating systems increase demand for electricity, pushing grid operators to turn to dispatchable power sources like coal and gas to meet peak demand. But the 2024-2025 winter was unseasonably warm, so demand for coal power was muted.
Grid operators would also have turned to thermal power more in July because of a drop in hydropower, China’s second-largest power source, which fell 9.8% compared to July 2024 because of drought conditions that limited dam inflows.
Fossil-fuelled power use, however, is still trending downwards this year compared to 2024, on track to potentially decline for the first time in a decade. Thermal power fell 1.3% over the first seven months as a whole, as competition from wind and solar intensified.
The statistics also showed that China’s overall power generation in July was 926.7 billion kWh, up 3.1% compared with the same period last year.
The National Bureau of Statistics figures, however, tend to understate total generation, particularly from renewables, as they only include industrial firms with annual revenues of at least 20 million yuan ($2.8 million) from their primary operations.
Fuller data will be released later in the month by the National Energy Administration.
(Reporting by Colleen Howe; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
