China’s energy watchdog under fire over pollution failures

Central government inspectors say the National Energy Administration did not enforce environmental standards, particularly on coal power

NEA has deadline to report back on how it plans to remedy the situation

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Despite overcapacity, plans for coal power steadily expanded in China last year after the NEA relaxed restrictions on new coal power plants in 2019. Photo: AFP

Published: 9:07pm, 1 Feb 2021Updated: 11:40pm, 1 Feb 2021

China’s energy regulator has come under rare fire from a team of central government inspectors over the agency’s lax enforcement of environmental standards.

A central environment inspection group, comprising officials from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, accused the National Energy Administration (NEA) of failing to make environmental protection a priority, resulting in long-term unfettered expansion in China’s energy industry.

The NEA had also failed to rein in coal-fired power capacity in key areas where it was supposed to be strictly controlled under air pollution policies, the inspectors said in a statement on Friday.

“The result is that what should have been built was not built but what shouldn’t have been was built,” the ministry said.

The failures are surprising given that President XI Jinping has repeatedly stressed that clean energy is one of the country’s modernisation goals in the coming decades.

The inspectors said coal power capacity was expanding in 12 key provinces and cities that were battlegrounds in the war against air pollution.