China’s total energy consumption continued growing over January-September, rising by 7.3% on year, according to data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) published on October 19. However, affected by energy use and intensity control, the growth slowed by 7.3 percentage points and 3.2 percentage points from Q1 and H1 respectively. Meanwhile, the country’s energy consumption per GDP unit – or energy intensity – dropped 2.3% on year, which was wider by 0.3 percentage point from H1.
Over January-September, energy consumption in the country’s six main energy-intensive industries grew 5.9% on year, or down 8.1 percentage points and 3.9 percentage points respectively from Q1 and H1, NBS data showed. The six comprise power generation, steelmaking, chemicals industry, petrochemical industry, construction materials manufacturing and non-ferrous metals smelting. The detailed energy consumption volume has not been released yet.
The percentage of clean energy including natural gas, hydro and wind power among all the energy consumed rose 0.6 percentage point on year over January-September, while over the same period, the percentage for coal dipped further by 0.2 percentage point on year, according to the bureau’s preliminary result. For full year 2020, China’s total energy consumption reached 4.98 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent, among which 56.8% was from coal.
China’s energy production grew over January-September, with total output of raw coal – the country’s core energy source – increasing by 3.7% on year to 2.93 billion tonnes over the same period.
Table 1: China’s fossil energy products production, imports to Sept
Table 2: China’s power generation by source to SeptOver January-September, power generation across China accelerated by 10.7% on year to 6.07 trillion kWh, which was 9.8 percentage points higher than during the same period last year, NBS data showed. Other than hydro power, the country’s power generation fuelled by clean energy maintained high-speed growth over the same period.
Source: Sean Xie and Russ McCulloch
