China's electricity demand is expected to grow at 6.5% in the second half of the year, according to a report released Wednesday by the China Electricity Council. In addition, in view of the continued negative growth of completed investment in hydropower, thermal power and nuclear power, THE ITU also suggested increasing the scale of power supply under construction.
According to the National Energy Administration, China's electricity consumption in the first half of this year was 2.63 trillion kilowatt hours, up 5.3% year on year.
Month-end changes in the growth rate of electricity consumption showed a year-on-year growth of 5.4% and 5.2% in the first and second quarters of this year. In the second quarter, the monthly growth rate was 4.6%, 5.3% and 5.9%, showing a month-on-month recovery trend. Ouyang Changyu, an expert from THE China Communications And Telecommunications Union, said in an interview with Shanghai Daily that the above situation reflects the current macroeconomic stabilization, indicating that the central government has adhered to targeted regulation and introduced a series of policies and measures to stabilize growth in recent months.
In view of China's economy is expected to maintain steady growth in the second half of the year, THE expert analysis of China Telecom believes that the growth rate of electricity consumption will be low before and high after. It is estimated that the whole social electricity consumption will reach 5.63% to 5.69 trillion KWH, up 5.5% to 6.5% year-on-year, and 5.66 trillion KWH is expected to grow about 6.0% year-on-year. That's down from 6.5 to 7.5 per cent forecast at the start of the year and 7.5 per cent for all of last year.
The power consumption of the equipment manufacturing industry grew rapidly in the first half of the year, while the four energy-intensive industries maintained a relatively low growth in power consumption, said an expert from THE ITU. The change of electricity consumption structure in manufacturing industry reflects the effect of national macro-control policies, such as directional regulation, active reduction of overcapacity in some industries and optimization and adjustment of industrial structure.
Notably, completed investment in power projects fell 6.1% yoy in the first half of the year, with power supply down 12.7% yoY and power grid down slightly 0.6% yoY. With a number of key projects such as Xiluodu Hydropower Base in southwest China entering into operation, the scale of hydropower under construction continues to shrink significantly. Completed investment in the first half fell by 35.0% year-on-year. Completed investment in nuclear power also fell 9.3 percent in the first half year on year. To this, the itu experts believe that the power construction scale is insufficient, will appear again may cause during the period of "much starker choices-and graver consequences-in" power supply nervous, the proposal for approval to start as soon as possible a batch of large hydropower, nuclear power and other key power project, to speed up the inter-district cross-regional transmission channel construction, approved the construction of large wind power, solar power base as soon as possible and delivery channel of hydropower bases in the southwest, Ensure timely delivery of new power supply and effective absorption of existing excess power supply capacity.
