China, Technology and the Environment: power consumption up nearly 6% in 2009

China’s power consumption in 2009 rose 5.96 percent to 3,643 billion kilowatt hours, the National Energy Administration (NEA) announced recently.

Growth was 0.47 percentage points higher than in 2008.

The country’s power consumption in October/2009 rose 15.87 percent year-on-year to 313.42 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), up for 5 consecutive months from June/2009. Accumulative power consumption in the first ten months of 2009 totaled 2977.5 billion kWh of electricity, up 2.97 percent over the same period of the previous year.

The trend keeps going up: China’s electricity consumption in January/2010 grew 40.14 percent year-on-year to 353.1 billion kilowatt-hours (kWhs), with the electricity consumption volume was 2.7 percent higher than that in December 2009, said the NEA.

Consumption in the primary industry sector topped 7 billion kWhs last month, up 23.5 percent year-on-year.

Secondary industry consumption rose 45.99 percent to 262.4 billion kWhs and the tertiary sector demand was up 25.61 percent to 39.8 billion kWhs.

Residential power use rose 25.9 percent to 44 billion kWhs,

China’s National Bureau of Statistics will publish power output data later, which is normally in line with consumption figures.

In 2009, the average utilization rate of power generators, each with capacity of 6,000 kilowatts and above, fell 121 hours from 2008 to 4,527 hours, the NEA said in a release published on the website of the National Development and Reform Commission.

China's power generating capacity increased 89.7 gigawatts GW last year to 874.07 GW at the end of 2009.

The country closed 26.17 GW of small coal-fired power generators last year, bringing total closures to 60.06 GW since 2006, 10 GW more than the target of 50 GW for the five years through 2010, the administration added.

via China power consumption up 5.96 pct in 2009 | Reuters.