Mainland industries in voltage overdrive

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.

The figures come from 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.

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 point lower than the figure for the first five months.

A breakdown 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 0.7 percentage point for light industry.

In the first half the power consumption of heavy industry was up 0.74 percentage point 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.