The industrial sector remains the chief consumer of electricity in the first half of this year though its consumption was 3.23 percentage points lower than a year earlier, according to an industry insider.

In the first six months of this year, the industrial sector consumed 869.577 billion kwh of electricity, an increase of 14.17 percent year on year, said Wang Yonggan, secretary-general of the China Electricity Council.

"But the growth rate is 3.23 percent lower than a year ago," he said, quoted by Tuesday's Economic Information Daily.

According to figures released by the council, China produced 1128.632 billion kwh of electricity in the first half of this year, a rise of 13.2 percent year on year; whereas the total power consumption amounted to 1148.699 billion kwh, up 13.91 percent.

The rapid growth of electricity consumption indicated the industrial sector, especially heavy power consumers, still was the main driven force of the rocketing power consumption, said Wang.

The second quarter saw an increase of 15.19 percent of power consumption in the industrial sector. In particular, the growth rate of power consumption in the heavy industry reached 9.1 percent, much higher than that of the light industry.

The total growth of power consumption of four top power consuming sub-industries, that is the chemical sector, nonferrous metals mining, ferrous metals mining and building materials, reached 16.77 percent in the second quarter, up 2.3 percent over the first quarter and 1.58 percentage points more than the total industrial sector.

Due to the rapid growth of power consumption of these four sub-industries, the industrial sector contributed 45.45 percent of the total growth of the country's power consumption.

Source: Xinhua