With the arrival of the heating season, the tension in electricity supply and demand began to spread from the local to the entire country. The 17 provinces in the country are facing power cuts. The picture shows that on November 10, a worker at a coal processing plant in Liaocheng, Shandong Province, shipped honeycomb coal for customers. The local honeycomb coal price was RMB 0.67 per unit, and the continued rise in coal prices exacerbated the tight electricity supply situation. Kong Xiaozheng

As the winter heating period approaches and the coal consumption keeps increasing, the latest issue of the Bohai Dynamic Coal Price Index announced on October 26th refreshes the highest price since the index was issued. Domestic coal prices continue to hit a record high and the current period is 5,500. The comprehensive average price of card coal is 853 yuan/ton, up 6 yuan/ton from the previous week, or 0.71%.

The Qinhuangdao coal price, which is known as the “barometer” of the Chinese coal market, continues to rise, with thermal coal prices of 5,500 kcal and 5,800 kcal rising by RMB 5/tonne from the previous period to RMB 850 to RMB 860/tonne. , 900 ~ 910 yuan *** / ton.

As domestic thermal coal prices continue to rise, power generation companies “walk” to the verge of losses, which also means that the supply and demand tensions starting this spring will run through the year 2011.

Power companies face trials

In the recent month, the coal price at Qinhuangdao Port has risen sharply.

"October 22, the exchange price of 5,500 kilos of Datong's superior blends was 760-780 yuan per ton. On September 25th, the Datong premium blending price of the same calories was 710-720 yuan. In less than a month, the price has increased by about 7%,” said Liu Zhicheng, executive director of BOC International and deputy head of the Hong Kong Research Department. The momentum still looks strong at this time, with coal peaks in the coming winter, domestic power. Coal spot prices will remain strong. “Our coal prices have been higher than expected since this year, and we have revised upwards the domestic thermal coal benchmark price forecasts by 9% and 14% for the current and next two years.”

According to reports, the losses of the five major power generation companies are also gradually increasing, and most of them have already exceeded the 50% loss. Earlier, at the regional special symposium convened by Datang Group, the principal responsible person stated that although Datang Group achieved profit for the month from May to July, it achieved an overall turnaround in August, and in September, although the power market was at a low point, it remained A slight surplus. However, since October, coal prices in both origins in Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, and Qinhuangdao have been rising to varying degrees. From the perspective of the increase in coal prices in October, Datang Group is once again making a few losses.

An executive from a power generation group told the reporter that at present, the loss of the power plant owned by the group is 58%, and the losses of several other power generation groups should be similar. In accordance with the current price and increase of coal prices, by the end of this year, the whole power generation industry will again fall into the industry-wide losses should be reasonable.

The relevant person of CEC also stated that if the price of Qinhuangdao coal continues to rise, the enthusiasm of the power plant will be seriously frustrated, and the tight coal power situation may become more frequent and severe, and the electricity shortage will increase.

The contradiction between coal and electricity is appearance

In the face of rising coal prices, in order to ease the operational difficulties, power generation companies tentatively proposed the possibility of re-adjustment price, but this is obviously not the fundamental solution to the contradiction between coal and electricity.

Judging from the appearance, this year’s partial “electricity shortage” has come early. On the one hand, the result of rapid increase in production capacity in some regions, and a large number of high-energy-consuming industries such as steel, building materials, and non-ferrous metals have been the direct inducements; on the other hand, it is because this year. In the southern drought, water shortages prevent hydropower from functioning.

However, industry analysts believe that China’s current total installed capacity of electric power is sufficient to meet the power demand under normal circumstances. The current shortage of electricity in China is no longer a problem of insufficient installed capacity. This year, the “electricity shortage” in certain regions has evolved from seasonal power shortages into full power. In the absence of electricity, the electricity shortage in the south spreads to most parts of the country. The real culprit is the coal shortage in power plants.

However, the "coal shortage" of power plants does not equal the "coal shortage" in the market. The industry believes that the institutional contradiction between "market coal" and "planned electricity" is still the root cause of this round of "electricity shortage."

Its performance lies in the contradiction of the coal price mechanism. In the coal and electricity industry chain, the marketization mechanism of electricity prices has not been finally formed, resulting in the more market-oriented coal prices, the greater the contradiction between coal and electricity. Constrained by price pressures, the expedient measure of the coal-electricity linkage mechanism is often difficult to implement in time under price pressures. The root cause of the contradiction between coal and electricity is that the system of “market coal and planned electricity” has not been straightened out, and the diarrhea between coal and electricity is difficult to resolve.

In fact, the competent authorities and power generation companies have also made a lot of attempts and efforts. For example, allowing power generation companies to extend upstream, access to coal resources to increase the self-sufficiency rate of coal; encourage coal companies and power generation companies to sign long-term cooperation contracts; accelerate the approval of new thermal power plants.

However, these efforts have been discounted in actual implementation. After some coal-fired power generators got their coals, they started to use “coal bosses”, why would it be easy to sell coal to make money, and why would they rely on electricity to make money? Because of the large gap between the key contract coal prices and market prices, in the past two years, many The behavior of fuel companies of power generation companies to profit from the difference in the price of reselling key contract coal has been exposed many times by the media.

How to solve the catastrophic problem between coal and electricity, may also need to rely on deep-level reforms to break through.

Only by deepening reforms can we escape from the predicament

In order to ease the operational difficulties of power generation companies and encourage enterprises to generate more power to ease the "electricity shortage", it was proposed that coal-fired electricity linkage mechanism be initiated. However, some experts have suggested that in the short term, the state should increase its subsidies to power plants should be more feasible.

Li Ting, a senior analyst at the Center for the Promotion of Circulation Productivity in China, believes that there are three ways to compensate: First, the price cut for coal is equal to the amount of profit that coal companies use to compensate thermal power companies; second, the price of electricity is raised, which is commonly referred to as coal-electricity linkage. It is equal to taking a piece of income from the downstream power companies and consumers to compensate thermal power companies. Third, the third party gives subsidies to thermal power companies. The third party is of course the government, and the government gives a portion of the fiscal revenue subsidies to thermal power companies.

“After resource integration, the coal industry’s market control has become stronger and stronger, and the price discourse is getting louder and louder, and the characteristics of coal prices that are prone to rise and fall are increasingly evident. In other words, the coal market is becoming stronger and stronger. It is obviously impossible to use the first method to compensate the thermal power industry, Li Ting said.

As for the measures to initiate “coal and coal linkage”, it is almost impossible for the current high CPI, and coal prices and electricity prices may also fall into the spiral of spiraling up.

“In the market economy, one of the most important roles of the government is to be a good referee. At present, there are imbalances in the distribution of profits between the two major industries of coal and electricity. It is of course necessary for the government to make a ruling and to make appropriate compensation to the party whose interests are damaged. Compensation." Li Ting thinks.

In fact, apart from the coal industry, the government is also a beneficiary of the rise in coal prices. According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first half of this year, the government’s total tax revenue from the power generation industry was only 42.77 billion yuan, an increase of only 12.64% year-on-year; and the total tax revenue from the coal mining and washing industry was 132.7 billion yuan. The year-on-year increase of 31.48% was 3.1 times that of the power generation industry. “As coal prices rose and electricity prices did not increase, some of the benefits that originally belonged to the power industry were transferred to the coal industry. After that, some of these benefits were transferred to the government through taxation,” Li Ting said.

"One of the greatest benefits of government subsidies is to stop prices from continuing to divert downwards." Industry experts believe that the real solution to the power shortage problem requires a deep-rooted reform of the industry structure, including the electric power system, and only deepen reforms. To get out of the predicament.