China’s heavy industry continues to increase power consumption

    BEIJING, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- China's high energy-consuming sectors such as iron and steel, nonferrous metals, chemicals and construction materials continued to lead the growth in power consumption in the first half of this year, according to a report by the China Electricity Council.

    Secondary industry was responsible for up to 83.83 percent of the growth in China's total power consumption, with heavy industry increasing its power consumption by 18.84 percent in the first half from a year earlier, making it more difficult for the country to realize its energy conservation goal.

    The power consumption nationwide reached 1.5 trillion kilowatt hours in the first half, up 15.56 percent year on year. The growth, 2.67 percentage points higher than the same period last year, was largely attributed to the power consumption of secondary industry, which was 3.9 percentage points higher than the year-earlier level though 0.31 percentage points lower than the figure for the first five months.

    A breakdown analysis shows heavy industry played a decisive role in the rapid growth of power consumption, as the growth rate of power consumption for heavy industry was 4.64 percentage points higher than a year earlier, compared with 0.70 percentage points for light industry. In the first half the power consumption of heavy industry was up 0.74 percentage points compared with the first three months while light industry saw a decrease of 1.1 percentage points.

    China is trying to control high energy-consuming and highly polluting sectors with a series of industrial policies as well as restricted credit support in order to meet its goals of improving energy efficiency and cutting pollutant discharges.

    Under a five-year plan from 2006 to 2010, China decided to cut energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 20 percent, or four percent each year, but actual consumption fell by just 1.23 percent last year.

    Redoubled efforts made China's energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product drop 2.78 percent in the first half, however, the task remains arduous.

    With rising power consumption, the six high energy-consuming and highly polluting industries, including iron and steel, nonferrous metals, construction materials and chemicals, grew by 20.1 percent in the first half, 3.6 percentage points higher than a year earlier.

    The six sectors account for nearly 70 percent of energy consumption and sulfur dioxide discharges of the entire industrial sector.

    The Chinese government is taking measures to eliminate outdated facilities of the six sectors.