On May 9, China Economic Herald, a national central economic news media under the administration of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), published a front-page article titled Huadian Coal Industry Drives High-quality Development of the Energy Industry Through Penetrating Supervision — AI Empowers Penetrating Supervision and Governance Innovation Activates New Quality Productive Forces. The article interprets how enterprises leverage the AI engine to implement the philosophy that penetration capability equals productive forces, build a smarter and more resilient risk supervision system, and elevate the level of production, operation and safety management.
Since the beginning of this year, the supervision reform of central state-owned enterprises (central SOEs) has continued to deepen, with steady progress made in advancing penetrating supervision, internal control compliance, and risk prevention and control. The supervision of central SOEs is gradually transforming from asset supervision to collaborative governance featuring capital supervision, governance supervision and risk supervision. It is accelerating the exploration of a new paradigm of technology empowerment plus governance improvement, which consolidates monitoring capabilities via AI and big data and improves the power and responsibility closed loop through a data governance system, offering new ideas for optimizing state-owned asset supervision and stimulating enterprise vitality during the 15th Five-Year Plan period.
Recently, reporters visited Huadian Coal Industry Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Huadian Coal Industry), a subsidiary of China Huadian Corporation Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as China Huadian). As an energy central SOE covering coal, power, railway, port and shipping businesses, the enterprise is breaking traditional management barriers through AI-enabled penetrating supervision, clearing obstacles and paving the way for the energy industry to foster new quality productive forces.
Renewing the Supervision Model to Boost Productive Forces
For large energy groups like Huadian Coal Industry with long industrial chains and multi-level organizational structures, traditional supervision is often plagued by out-of-focus dilemmas such as information attenuation, ambiguous power and responsibility boundaries, and difficulty in capturing supply chain risks. These hidden barriers hinder the market-oriented transformation of enterprises.
To develop new quality productive forces, the primary task is to break institutional and management barriers. Energy enterprises need to improve operational efficiency while shouldering the responsibility of energy supply guarantee and industrial chain coordination. The traditional supervision model that emphasizes form over practical results can hardly balance risk control and vitality release.
Centering on the development goal of building a first-class coal enterprise featuring Four New Advantages and Four Strong Capabilities, Huadian Coal Industry is promoting in-depth integration of AI and big data with its core coal business. By building a smarter and more resilient risk supervision system, the company has upgraded its production and safety management performance,” said Sun Jun, Member of the Party Committee and Deputy General Manager of Huadian Coal Industry. “In light of our actual development conditions, we have put forward an implementation path guided by Party building leadership and targeted at compliance management, risk prevention and control, as well as quality and efficiency improvement. This is not only a concrete action to implement the Four Comprehensives requirements issued by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council and China Huadian, but also an inherent need for the company’s own development.”
Focusing on Penetration, Transparency and Supervision to Build AI-enabled Penetrating Supervision
In the construction of AI-enabled penetrating supervision, Huadian Coal Industry has explored and implemented a series of measures focusing on penetration, transparency and supervision, achieving remarkable results.
How to Achieve Penetration: Full Horizontal Coverage and Vertical In-depth Reach Across the Entire Business Process
Penetrating management and control is a systematic project requiring full staff participation and online operation of all businesses. According to Sun Jun, Huadian Coal Industry has jointly built a penetrating intelligent management and control system with Luculent Wisdom Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Luculent). The system connects the full-link and all-level businesses of 16 subsidiaries and holding institutions covering coal, power, railway, port and shipping, realizing online supervision of all businesses with full horizontal coverage and vertical in-depth reach.
Huadian Coal Industry has integrated more than 20 internal and external professional systems and carried out a comprehensive data governance initiative. Horizontally, it has opened up five main business lines including full-cycle project management, production and operation, materials and equipment, technological innovation, and intelligent supervision, realizing integrated operation in investment management, business operation, asset management and risk management.
In addition, the company has scientifically optimized the on-site data collection mechanism, formulated output collection standards, and automatically collected key data of coal mining, washing and sales. Through data audit and verification, it provides early warning and prevents potential risks such as mismatched production and sales volume and excessive gangue disposal, thoroughly solving the long-standing problem of failure to collect on-site data.
How to Achieve Transparency: Shifting from Manual Prevention to Intelligent Prevention with AI Sentinels on All-round Duty
If penetration builds the expressway for management and control, it is AI and big data that enable supervision to go deep into every business link.
“In the past, compliance review mainly relied on manual reporting. Now, supported by real-time risk supervision models, the system realizes all-weather, full-coverage inspection and dynamic early warning,” Sun Jun introduced. Taking a problem-oriented approach, Huadian Coal Industry has extracted hundreds of risk control nodes from over 300 institutional documents, more than 500 audit problems accumulated over the years, and over 2,000 potential work safety hazards. These nodes are embedded into every business link. Powered by the AI recognition engine, these intelligent sentinels can identify hidden risks across departments and businesses, deliver advance early warnings, and even trigger business circuit breakers when necessary to suspend workflow until risks are eliminated.
For instance, after the system went online, safety, environmental protection and personnel management measures are moved forward to the front end. Joint prevention and control are implemented in procurement preparation, bidding evaluation, contract signing and other links, with strict verification of personnel qualifications to eliminate illegal subcontracting and unauthorized subcontracting, fully defusing the management risks of external contractors and outsourcing teams. In terms of preventing false trade risks in the coal supply chain, leveraging online business management advantages, the company has shifted from passive problem solving to active risk prevention. The system automatically identifies key title documents, issues advance warnings, blocks irregular practices at the source and puts an end to false trade.
How to Implement Supervision: Building an Evolvable Governance Ecosystem to Enable Value Creation Through Compliance
The outcomes of penetration and transparency ultimately lie in sustainable standardized supervision. Huadian Coal Industry has built a digital and intelligent governance ecosystem centered on a dynamic knowledge base, a dual-track supervision mechanism covering risk control and energy efficiency management, and a unified digital platform.
It safeguards safety and compliance through risk early warning, diagnoses and optimizes key indicators such as production deviation, supply chain timeliness and equipment efficiency based on energy efficiency models, and drives precise resource allocation. The whole process from risk identification, early warning notification, rectification and feedback to review and closure is realized online with closed-loop management and full traceability.
More importantly, the system features evolvability. When regulations are updated or new risks emerge, business personnel can quickly adjust or build new models with low-code tools in a modular way, enabling continuous iteration of the governance system.
Governance hinges on people. The platform establishes a hierarchical early warning release and disposal mechanism linked to institutional and individual performance, prompting business, risk control and supervision departments to perform their respective duties. It translates the corporate culture of everyone abides by compliance, everyone guards against risks, and everyone pursues efficiency into traceable and assessable practical actions.
From Effective Control to Flexible Governance: Penetrating Supervision Unleashes Productive Forces
Wu Aibin, Chairman of Luculent, stated in an interview: “AI-enabled penetrating supervision not only improves enterprise operational efficiency and risk resilience, but also provides digital confidence and agile capabilities for energy central SOEs to fulfill their energy supply guarantee mission through online business operation, real-time data sharing and intelligent risk control.”
Nowadays, enterprises firmly hold the brake of risk prevention and control while steadily stepping on the accelerator of efficiency improvement. Based on the bottom line of safety and compliance, they convert dividends from management, data and technology into operational benefits and industrial competitiveness, delivering more stable energy support, more resilient industrial chain operation and smoother internal governance.
The practice of Huadian Coal Industry proves that for the traditional energy industry to develop new quality productive forces, the key lies in breaking institutional, technological and operational bottlenecks through modernized governance. By reshaping management and control logic with penetrating supervision, activating data value with AI, and adapting to regulatory and market changes via an evolvable system, Huadian Coal Industry has not only pioneered a digital and intelligent governance path for large energy groups, but also provided a tangible and replicable practical model for similar enterprises with heavy assets, long industrial chains and high safety requirements. It clears obstacles and escorts the sound growth of new quality productive forces in a vibrant industrial ecosystem.
