Preliminary estimations released by China indicated that the Chinese total energy consumption increased by 3.7%, which confirms the Chinese slowdown in energy consumption from 10% in 2010, to 8.4% in 2011 and then 5.5% in 2012. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the rise in energy consumption observed in 2013 is in line with the 3.7% increase in coal consumption, which weights about 75% of the total energy consumption. Natural gas consumption increased more rapidly (13%) but it represents only 4% of the Chinese consumption. Crude oil and electricity consumption increased by 3.4% and 7.5% respectively in 2013.
On the production side, China raised its energy output by 2.4%, in line with the 2012 increase (2.3%). However, a significant slowdown is observed in coal production since the 2013 rise barely reached 0.8%, which contrasts with the strong annual growth of 8.4%/year on average recorded between 2000 and 2012. Similarly, the crude oil production rise of 1.8% was dramatically lower than in 2012 (6%), while the natural gas production continued to grow rapidly (+9.4%). The electricity output increased by 7.5%, driven by the power generated using coal (+7%).
94 GW of power generation capacity were installed in 2013 representing a 9.3% rise to 1,247 GW, of which 36.5 GW of thermal (+5.7%), 29.9 GW of hydropower capacity (+12.3%), 2.2 GW of nuclear (+16.2%), wind 14.1 GW (24.5%) and 11.3 GW of solar (+340%).
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