Strict Prohibition on Illegal Construction Under the Name "Green Methanol," Coal-to-Methanol Projects to Be Tightened and Approval Suspended?

Under the background of the "dual carbon" goals, environmental protection and energy consumption control policies are becoming increasingly stringent. The coal-to-methanol industry is a high energy consumption and high emission sector, facing enormous pressure to reduce emissions. The year 2025 marks the final year of the 14th Five-Year Plan and also the last year for the implementation of the "2024-2025 Energy Saving and Carbon Reduction Action Plan." Approximately 25% of the coal-to-methanol production capacity in China has energy efficiency below the benchmark level, and such capacity needs to be completely phased out.

1. Policy tightening

On June 10, 2025, the Henan Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology issued a notice on implementing the "Implementation Plan for Accelerating Clean and Low-Carbon Hydrogen Application in the Industrial Sector."

The Henan Department of Industry and Information Technology recently introduced new regulations strictly prohibiting the illegal construction of "coal-to-methanol" projects under the name of "green methanol." Does this indicate that the approval of domestic coal-to-methanol projects will be further tightened or even suspended?

The document points out the vigorous development of hydrogen-carbon coupling for green methanol production. It promotes the construction of green methanol demonstration projects, aims to improve carbon conversion rates and methanol selectivity, and strictly prohibits the illegal construction of coal-to-methanol projects that do not comply with industrial policies under the name of green methanol. It actively promotes hydrogen-nitrogen coupling for green ammonia synthesis. Energy companies, chemical enterprises, shipping companies, and shipbuilding enterprises are encouraged to jointly advance the construction of green ammonia demonstration projects, promote large-scale wind and solar off-grid hydrogen production, flexible scheduling and control of ammonia synthesis processes, and the application of coordinated control across the entire “electricity–hydrogen–ammonia” system.

Explore the development of hydrogen-electricity integrated industrial green microgrids. Encourage industrial enterprises, industrial parks, and data centers to collaborate with energy companies in a market-oriented manner to explore hydrogen-electricity integrated industrial green microgrids. Accelerate the development and operation of integrated systems such as wind power, photovoltaic power generation, renewable energy hydrogen production, diversified hydrogen storage, fuel cell power generation/combined heat and power, and smart energy management and control, to achieve coordinated and optimized utilization of regional resources.

2. Multiple coal-to-methanol projects have been halted.

Several large coal-to-methanol projects in the Xinjiang region have been suspended.

Xinjiang Blue Ridge Tunhe: 1.1 million tons per year project, with an investment of 6.78 billion, as a supporting project for the industrial chain using Zhundong coal as raw material.

Xinjiang Qiya New Materials: 6 million tons/year coal-based methanol project, with a total investment of 30 billion, aims to create a global model of modern coal chemical engineering.

Fude (Xinjiang) New Energy: With a 6 million tons/year project, aiming to build the world's largest methanol industry chain, and currently in the environmental assessment stage.

Other regional projects, such as Sinopec's 1 million tons/year project in Zhijin, Guizhou (with an investment of 23.7 billion yuan), Baokun's 2 million tons of tail gas to methanol project in Inner Mongolia, and the 250,000 tons coke oven gas to methanol and co-production of liquid ammonia project in Guxian, Shanxi, have also been affected to varying degrees.