Commissioned by the National Energy Administration (NEA) in June 2010, CIECC carried out a comparative study on coal transportation vs. power transmission, a supporting research project for the “12^th Five-year National Power and Power Grid Development Plan.” For the first time in China, CIECC put forward the following opinions: First, it is inappropriate to relocate coal-fired power plants from the Central and Eastern regions to the Western region at the expense of resources and environment of the latter in exchange for pollution reduction and economic development of the former. Second, since the installed capacity of East China, Central China, and North China accounts for about 70% of the national total and the safe, stable operation of the three regional power grids is of vital importance to the overall situation of the whole country, a huge amount of electricity being transmitted to the above three regional power grids in the form of 1000KV AC and the resultant synchronous power grid expansion will threaten the stability of power grid and the security of power transmission. Third, coal transportation and a reasonable scale of power transmission should coexist in the future. The research results have been applied in the 12^th Five-year National Power Development Plan.