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China’s economy is “more driven by exports than any time in the past decade,” but official energy use targets fail to take that into account, economists Larry Hu and Xinyu Ji of Macquarie Group said in a report.
Some provinces used up most of their quotas for energy consumption in the first half of the year and are cutting back to stay under their limits, according to Li Shuo, a climate policy expert at Greenpeace in Beijing.
Utility companies, meanwhile, are being squeezed by soaring coal and gas prices. That discourages them from increasing output because the government limits their ability to pass on costs to customers, said Li.
Prices have risen “past the range of what China’s electricity industry can bear,” Li said.
China has launched repeated campaigns to make its energy-hungry economy more efficient and clean up smog-choked cities.
City skies are visibly clearer, but the abrupt way the campaigns are carried out disrupts supplies of power, coal and gas, leaving families shivering in unheated homes and forcing factories to shut down."
https://www.usnews.com/news/busines...-factories-households-grapple-with-power-cuts
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