07-08-08 China continued to make headway in its efforts to improve energy efficiency as its per-unit energy consumption was down 2.88 % year on year in the first half, official figures revealed.
The figure was 0.1 percentage point more than the same period last year, according to a bulletin jointly released by the National Bureau of Statistics, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration.

China launched a nationwide campaign to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse emissions in 2006. It vowed to reduce energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product by 20 % and major pollutant emissions by 10 % by 2010 from the 2005 levels.
The energy intensity index went down 3.66 % last year. During the first half, the energy consumption of per-unit value added in industrial firms with annual sales exceeding yuan 5 mm ($ 728,727) ratcheted down 5.76 % year on year, according to the bulletin.

The year-on-year drop was 6.74 % for the coal sector,4.05 % for the iron and steel sector, 3.7 % for the non-ferrous metal sector, and 9.98 % for the building material sector.
Xie Zhenhua, NDRC's deputy minister, said there was still a long way to go before China could meet its energy conservation targets. The country had just completed a quarter of its energy conservation quota during the past two years.

China's high-energy-consuming industries experienced a growth slowdown in the first half, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The six biggest-energy-guzzling sectors in China -- electric power, non-ferrous metal, chemicals, iron and steel, building materials and petroleum -- recorded a growth of 14.5 % in output value, 5.6 percentage points lower than the growth rate for the same period last year.
The government has adopted a policy of curbing the development of energy-consuming and high-polluting sectors nationwide, in order to help improve environmental protection and achieve a sustainable economic growth.