China sets efficiency floors for coal plants — old ones have 3 years to upgrade or shut down

China's government just published binding efficiency and emissions standards for coal-fired power plants, heating systems, and coal-to-gas conversion facilities. Plants that fall below the new baseline have three years to retrofit or face closure, while new projects must meet higher 'benchmark' standards from day one.

This is a structural tightening, not a rhetorical one. The directive names specific efficiency metrics (coal consumption per unit of heat or electricity, emissions per unit output) and ties them to hard deadlines and enforcement consequences. Existing coal plants operating below the baseline cannot simply pay a fine or apply for an exemption — they must physically upgrade their equipment or be decommissioned. The mechanism is simple: define the floor, measure against it, eliminate what falls short. This forces capital spending at scale. China's coal fleet is enormous, so even a modest efficiency improvement across thousands of plants represents billions in equipment retrofits and technology deployment. The directive also expands the scope of what counts as 'clean coal' — adding coal-to-gas conversion and other conversion pathways to the measurement regime, which means more coal infrastructure now faces the same upgrade-or-exit logic.