History and future of the coal and coal chemical industry in China

In recent years, the traditional coal and coal chemical industries in China have suffered from overcapacity. Although the development of new coal chemical industries is receiving increasing attention, the constraints of new environmental laws and carbon emission reduction targets continue to increase. Therefore, it is necessary to judge the developmental scale trend of the industries and, furthermore, to provide guidance to businesses and governments. Based on the coal and coal chemical industries, this research recognizes significant factors affecting industrial development in terms of market, enterprise reform, policy, technology, industrial structure adjustment, and so on and carries out a qualitative analysis and quantitative evaluation of the industry developing driving force. A dynamic mathematical model is set up to fit the historical trend of industrial development, and the fitting parameters are modified based on the actual data. As the fitting result shows, the Driving Force Model is practical for characterizing the scale of industrial development. The developing trends in the coal and coal chemical industries in China are predicted based on the model. The results show that the Shanxi coal industry will have to emerge from a difficult period of industrial development, and the development of the coal chemical industry in China will greatly depend on the price ratio between crude oil and coal. Ultimately, this research proposes suggestions for the sustainable development of the two industries in terms of circular economies, technical breakthroughs, policy making, and so on.