China Daily quoted a statement on the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said China will continue to phase out unneeded industrial capacity this year with 2,255 enterprises closing facilities, while the government fights the worst power shortage in years.
According to the statement obsolete production capacity in 18 major industrial sectors including iron, steel, coke, cement, flat glasses, paper making as well as printing and dyeing will be eliminated.
The MIIT statement said that production capacity for 31.22 million tonnes of iron, 27.94 million tons of steel, 19.75 million tons of coke and 153.27 million tonnes of cement will be removed by the end of the year as the country continues to reduce pollution, conserve energy and upgrade industry.
According to statistics from the China Electricity Council China is facing the worst power shortage this year since 2004 while industrial power consumption is growing at 12%YoY.
Some experts say the power shortage indicates a need for additional adjustment of the country economic structure, arguing that the rising demand for electricity is due mainly to the operation of heavy industries with low energy efficiency.
The National Energy Administration said the government will work hard to eliminate obsolete capacity in industries such as steel and cement to control excessive growth of high energy-consuming industries.
According to the NEA China electricity consumption in the first five months of this year rose 12%YoY to 1.85 trillion kilowatt hours while about 887 billion kWh of electricity or 48% was consumed by heavy industries with low energy efficiency, such as the power, chemical, building material, steel and nonferrous metal industries.
These energy intensive sectors have contributed 5.1% of the total growth rate.
( Source: www.steelguru.com )