Research can help fight pollution, but firms need clear standards, reports Du Juan.

Coal is loaded into trucks at a railway station in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province.[Provided to China Daily]

With major cities on the Chinese mainland often shrouded in smog, the government and many companies are striving to cut the use of coal - the major fuel source for the nation's power supply - and make it cleaner. But those efforts face a number of difficulties, including unclear standards, high costs and reluctance by coal producers to assume the expense of compliance.

"China has world-class clean coal technology, but the absence of clear standards and the weak level of supervision are hampering the industry's growth," said Bian Cheng, president of Keda Clean Energy Co Ltd.

The Shanghai-listed company, based in Guangdong, has been investing in coal gasification for about eight years. Bian said that the company has yet to make much profit despite spending "billions of yuan" to develop technology and equipment.

However, he added: "When the government recently enacted a strict environmental protection law, I regained confidence in the clean coal industry."

He said that industry leaders, including his company, do not need government subsidies. All they want are clear standards and a well-defined regulatory framework.

According to Bian, there are few barriers to entry in the industry, because there are no definite technical standards on what constitutes a clean coal project. That ambiguity in turn makes it difficult for local governments to approve coal projects.

"We need clearer guidance on how to put our technology into actual operation," he said.

Nur Bekri, head of the National Energy Administration, the nation's top energy planner, said the authorities are developing appropriate policies.

Under China's energy strategy for 2014-20, the nation will cap coal use at 4.2 billion metric tons by 2020. But the strategy makes it clear that coal will remain the nation's major source of energy for a long time, although it calls for accelerated research into cleaner technologies.

Liu Zhenyu, director of the energy engineering center at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology, said the government needs to confront the problems of coal use directly, because the fuel still accounts for as much as 65 percent of primary energy consumption.

He said that coal-fired power plants are not the chief cause of pollution. Rather, industrial boilers and small, inefficient coal-fired boilers are mainly to blame for carbon emissions. According to Liu, such boilers cause more pollution than coal-fired power plants, although they only use 70 percent as much coal.