The Xinyan coal mine – located in Lyuliang city, North China's Shanxi province – continues to work with telco China Mobile to advance the energy revolution there.

Since 2019, they have worked together to roll out remote control, data acquisition and the transformation of mining production, equipment operation, production scheduling and monitoring based on 5G network and intelligent platforms. 

This has helped the mine reduce costs of producing a metric ton of coal by 15 yuan ($2.32), save over 30 million yuan in labor costs each year and improve mining safety by reducing unnecessary personnel. 

The Xinyan coal mine is a microcosm of Lyuliang in boosting its tech R&D and tech achievements commercialization to advance the energy revolution.

The resources-based city has earmarked 9 million yuan for R&D related to 31 energy-related technologies this year. 

It has deepened supply-side structural reforms of the coal industry, by pushing forward intelligent, green and safe coal mining, promoting industrial upgrading from the coking coal to the coal chemicals industry, expanding the coal-bed gas industry, and accelerating the integrated cluster development of coal, electricity, aluminum and magnesium. 

The city has also developed clean energy, new energy and new materials and strengthened tech innovation in the energy sector. 

As a result, Lyuliang has seen remarkable achievements in its energy revolution. 

The construction of 5G-based smart mines, as well as two intelligent coal mines and 128 intelligent mining and excavation platforms have been progressing smoothly.

The coal-formed gas reserves and production capacity are steadily increasing. From January to July, total coal-formed gas production was 1.27 billion cubic meters, a year-on-year increase of 131 percent that topped total output for 2020. 

New energy projects, such as the two 100,000-kilowatt wind power projects in local Jiaocheng county, have run smoothly and are set to start operating by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, 1.4 million tons of coking overcapacity has been reduced this year, by restricting the development of high-energy consumption and high-emission projects.