Post: 467000

Mailing address: jia county West Street, Pingdingshan, Henan.

In late April, the signing ceremony of the cooperative investment agreement between China Huaneng Group Huazhong Branch and Jiaxian People's Government for coal-fired power projects was held in Pingdingshan.

According to reports, the installed capacity of the project is 2× 300,000 kilowatts, with a total investment of 2.7 billion yuan.

"This is the largest investment project ever introduced in Jiaxian county," a leader of Jiaxian county government told reporters. "After the project is completed, it can promote the development of circular economy in our county, realize the multi-link appreciation of resources and properly solve the environmental problem caused by coal gangue."

It is understood that there are 24 coal mines in Jiaxian County, with an annual output of more than 4 million tons of raw coal and more than 900,000 tons of by-products such as coal gangue and coal slime.

In terms of coal production and reserves, Jiaxian county is not a coal-rich county, so why can Huaneng Group, one of the five major power companies, attract huge investment?

"The efficiency of coal gangue power generation is not high, but the cost is low," a technician of Pingdingshan Coal Group told the reporter. "If coal is used for power generation, the primary electricity cost is 30-40 cents, but the coal gangue power generation can be reduced to 1 gross."

"In fact, a few years ago, Huaneng was very disdainful of Jiaxian's resource reserves. Now that coal prices continue to rise, Huaneng must reduce operating costs by integrating coal resources. " An industry insider said.

Helpless move

Statistics show that in the first quarter of this year, the market price of coal rose by more than 100 yuan per ton, and coal accounted for nearly 60% to 70% of the cost of thermal power. Now the loss of the whole power industry has reached 4 1.69%. According to statistics, the demand for coal in the power industry will exceed10.40 billion tons in 2008, which means that power enterprises will spend at least 424 million more.

In the face of rising coal prices, power companies that have been generally losing money in the industry have recently frequently reported the news of investing in coal mines. Recently, the investigation report on the merger and reorganization of coal mining enterprises issued by the National Development and Reform Commission mentioned that large enterprises such as electric power should be encouraged to merge and reorganize coal mines to realize the integrated operation of coal and electricity.

"The power generation group extends to the coal industry, which can share the profits of the coal industry, stabilize costs and improve the industrial chain through integrated management." An official of Henan Coal Bureau told the reporter.

Li Yongsheng, deputy mayor of Pingdingshan City, said: "China Huaneng Group has abundant capital and technical strength, as well as rich experience in power project construction and management. Cooperation with Jiaxian can complement each other and promote the common development of enterprises and local economies, which is a rare development opportunity for both sides. "

Is the merger of power plants and coal mines a good way to solve the dilemma of power enterprises and the future development direction?

For this problem, in interviews, industry experts and business people generally believe that the future is difficult to determine, but at present, power companies are more forced to invest in coal mines under the pressure of high cost.

Pan Xingjun, an analyst in central china securities, said: "If the cost pressure of rising coal prices is not too great and the electricity price has not been adjusted, there is no need for power companies to invest in coal mines, because the power industry should have made money. Now that coal prices are so high, it will cost a lot of money to merge and reorganize coal mines. Although the government encourages it, who wants the top management to take over? "

And people in power companies agree with this view.

In 2007, Huaneng Group consumed about 654.38+37 million tons of coal, of which about 90% came from market procurement. The proportion of coal purchased in the market is too high, which brings more and more pressure to the coal supply guarantee ability and operating cost control.

Huaneng International, a listed company of Huaneng Group, recently released the first quarter report, showing that the company's net profit in the first quarter of 2008 will drop by more than 50% compared with the same period of last year, and the power generation will increase by 65,438+08% year-on-year.

Huaneng International said that the decline in performance was due to the sharp increase in the price of coal for power generation.

Therefore, while continuing to strengthen strategic cooperation with large coal enterprises, Huaneng will further strengthen coal-electricity joint ventures and coal mine development to ensure coal supply.

Before investing in Jiaxian County, Huaneng officially unveiled the Baishan coal gangue power plant project with an investment of 2.86 billion yuan in Jilin on April 6, 16.

15 In April, Hu Shihai, assistant general manager of Huaneng Group, revealed at the "2008 China International Coal Conference" that Huaneng Group planned to increase its self-supplied coal quantity from170,000 tons in 2007 to 45 million tons by 20 15, so as to make the coal self-sufficiency rate from the current12.

This means that within three years, Huaneng will add at least 28 million tons of coal production capacity with a total investment of several billion yuan. If the above objectives can be achieved, Huaneng will become the company with the largest coal production capacity and the highest self-sufficiency rate among the five state-owned power generation groups (the other four are Datang, Huadian, Guodian and China Power Investment Corporation).

Despite the increasing shortage of coal resources and the existence of local protectionism, Huaneng still chose to accelerate its entry into the coal field. This is also one of its effective "self-help" measures. At present, among the five state-owned power generation groups, only Huaneng has maintained a meager profit, and the other four groups all suffered losses in the first quarter of 2008.

"We are doing our best to improve efficiency. At the same time, it is constantly increasing its efforts to expand into upstream resource-based industries, improve coal supply security capabilities, and control fuel costs. " Hu Shihai, assistant general manager of Huaneng, said. According to insiders of Huaneng, in addition to Jilin and Henan, Huaneng is also preparing to invest in new coal mines in western regions such as Gansu, Shaanxi, Xinjiang and Ningxia.