Kazakhstan and Mongolia held discussions today to boost co-operation in various energy sectors, including coal.
Kazakhstan's energy minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov met with Mongolia's industry and mineral resources minister Gongoryn Damdinnyam to discuss ways in which the two countries can develop their energy sectors.
The discussions included jointly developing projects for deep coal processing and analysing coal specifications.
Countries in central Asia have recently pushed for developments in their respective coal sectors, with several having already received investments from China, Russia and the US.
Kazakhstan plans to produce 128.9mn t of coal this year which, if achieved, would represent an 11pc increase from 115.9mn t produced in 2025. Kazakhstan is the largest coal producer in central Asia and aims to aggressively ramp up coal production this year to increase coal-fired power generation as part of a national project. The country aims to increase exports of thermal coal after shipping around 30mn t last year to Russia, Poland, Uzbekistan, Turkey, India and Malaysia.
Mongolia exported 27.5mn t of coal in January-March, up by 57pc on the year, all to China. The country did, however, set a more conservative target of 90mn t coal production earlier this year, likely because of the risk of falling metallurgical coal demand from Chinese steelmakers.
Separately, Kazakhstan plans to cut emissions from coal-fired power plants by just over a third as part of its national project starting this year, the energy ministry announced today. This will be achieved by modernising existing coal plants and using modern equipment to build its new fleet of supercritical coal-fired power plants.
