The clean and efficient utilization of coal is an important way to promote the low-carbon and green transformation of the energy structure of China. As one of the main pollutants duning coal combustion, heavy metals are harmful to human beings and the ecological environment. At present, the United States has begun to implement heavy metal emission standards for coal-fired power plants, and the emission compliance is realized mainly by coal washing to reduce the heavy metal inputs. The coal consumption amount of China is huge, with the high heavy metal content in some types of coal, and regional differences are large. It is urgent to develop heavy metal control technologies which meet China′s national conditions. Three typical heavy metals (arsenic, selenium and lead), which were highly volatile and highly toxic, were selected to summarize the current emission status and control technologies of heavy metal in coal-fired power plants at home and abroad. The ultra-low emission technology route of China has a synergistic control effect on heavy metals. Among them, selenium mostly exists in the gaseous form, and is mainly washed out in the wet flue gas desulfurization system. Arsenic and lead are mainly attached to the particulate matter, and the dust collector has synergistic capture effects for them. However there are still some bottlenecks such as poor mass transfer driving force for trace gaseous selenium and penetration of fine-particulate arsenic and lead, making it difficult to achieve stable and efficient capture of heavy metals. "Transformation and fixation" is the general idea of heavy metal control, that is, by chemical composition regulation and physical flow field optimization, to promote the transformation of heavy metals in flue gas from fine-particulate and gaseous form to coarse-particulate form, and from high toxicity form to low toxicity form, so as to realize the harmless treatment of heavy metals. Based on this idea, a series of whole-process control technologies for heavy metals in coal-fired power plants have been formed, which can be divided into three categories: pre-furnace, in-furnace, and post-furnace according to the action stage. The specific technologies include coal washing, coal blending, in-furnace adsorbents, agglomeration, internal component optimization, etc. The stabilization of heavy metals in coal-fired by-products (such as desulfurization gypsum and wastewater) requires additional attention. The release risk of heavy metals in by-products can be reduced by in-situ solidification of slurry or advanced wastewater treatment technologies. Some of the above heavy metal control technologies have been verified through pilot tests or the full-scaled unit experiments, which have a good application prospect. In order to further develop the coal-fired heavy metal control technologies and improve the level of heavy metal pollution governance, some prospects about the development of heavy metals control technologies were put forward: developing the online continuous detection technology of trace heavy metals in the actual coal-fired flue gas to realize the real-time acquisition of heavy metal concentrations in flue gas, analyzing the transformation behavior and kinetic characteristics of heavy metals under the multiple mechanisms, to clarify the detailed migration mechanism of heavy metals under complex flue gas conditions, establishing an evaluation system for coal-fired heavy metal control technologies, and providing targeted heavy metal solutions according to power plant characteristics, target, technology maturity, economy, environmental risks, etc.