China's electricity consumption in 2013 to grow 7.5% on year

Huaihua, Hunan (Platts)--28Feb2013/659 am EST/1159 GMT

China's annual electricity consumption in 2013 is expected to grow about 7.5% year on year to about 5,330 billion kWh, according to a report Thursday from the China Electricity Council.

In 2012, China consumed 4,960 billion kWh of electricity, an increase of 5.5% from 2011.

CEC expects China's national design electricity generation capacity to increase by 87,000 MW, or 7.6% year on year, to 1,230,000 MW at the end of 2013. Of that, hydropower will account for 280,000 MW, coal-fired power will represent 860,000 MW, nuclear power will comprise 14,780 MW, and wind power will comprise 75,000 MW.

China's national design electricity generation capacity rose by 80,200 MW, or 7.8% year on year, to 1,145,000 MW at the end of 2012.

Coal demand and supply is expected to be in balance in 2013, according to the CEC report, which also noted that coal shortages may emerge in the peak season for electricity consumption as the bottleneck of coal railing capacity has yet to be resolved.

As a supplement to domestic coal supply, China's coal imports are expected to remain strong in 2013, CEC said.

--Reggie Le, newsdesk@platts.com
--Edited by Jonathan Fox, jonathan_fox@platts.com

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