Energy-intensive industries increase China's power consumption

The National Energy Administration (NEA) said on Friday that six energy-intensive industries accounted for 42.7 percent of the country's power consumption growth during the first five months of this year.

China's overall power consumption increased by 12 percent year-on-year, reaching 1.85 trillion kilowatt-hours (kwh) in the first five months of 2011. The electricity, steel, building material, non-ferrous metal mining, chemical engineering and petroleum industries contributed 5.1 percentage points to the increased consumption rate, the NEA said in a statement on its website.

The six industries consumed 887.3 billion kwh during the first five months of this year, the statement said.

The government should put a cap on power consumption in order to force energy-intensive industries to use less electricity, an unnamed NEA official said.

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