China's coal industry will reach a production capacity of 4.1 billion tons by the end of 2015, but total output will be kept within 3.9 billion tons in order to reduce carbon emissions, said Wu Yin, deputy director of National Energy Administration (NEA) on Thursday.

During a conference on the 12th Five-Year-Plan (2011-2015) for the coal industry, Wu said China will continue to expand existing large-scale coal production bases. This will include increasing the annual production capacity of ten coal companies to 100 million tons each, and the annual production capacity of another ten companies to 50 million tons each. These twenty companies will be responsible for 60 percent of the national output of coal, according to the plan.

In 2010, the total output of the current 14 large coal production bases in China reached 2.8 billion tons, accounting for 87 percent of the national production.

Coal companies will be encouraged to go overseas to explore resources, and increase investment abroad. Besides importing coal, some domestic coal production areas in North China will be exporting coal, according to the plan.