I am glad that the blackout is expected to effect only September. Baosteel has to shut down a large furnace possibly for over 3 months acc. to this article (reprint from Glovepark2's post, Yahoo CNAM board):
By JOE McDONALD AP Business Writer © 2010 The Associated Press
Sept. 8, 2010, 5:37AM
BEIJING — Chinese steel mills and mobile phone factories are being idled and thousands of homes in one area are doing without electricity as local governments order power cuts to meet energy-saving targets set by Beijing.
Rolling blackouts and enforced power cuts are affecting key industrial areas. The prosperous eastern city of Taizhou turned off street lights and ordered hotels and shopping malls to cut power use. In Anping County southwest of Beijing, an area known as China's wire-manufacturing capital, thousands of factories and homes have endured daylong blackouts over the past two weeks.
It's not the first time something like this has happened.
Energy intensity fell by 14.4 percent by the end of 2009 after thousands of antiquated steel mills and other factories were forced to close, the government says. But it crept back up by 0.9 percent in the first half of this year.
Beijing reacted by ordering 2,087 steel and cement mills and other factories with poor environmental controls to close. The Cabinet stepped up pressure on local leaders by sending inspectors to 18 of China's 32 provinces and major regions to enforce efficiency.
"They understand that if they fail to meet this target it could potentially cast doubt not just internationally but domestically about whether China is serious about tackling its emissions," said Greenpeace's Yang.
Yang said environmentalists welcome moves to close antiquated factories because that improves overall efficiency. But she said temporary blanket cuts come at a high social cost and the government should be taking more long-term steps such as changing energy pricing to encourage conservation.
"What they are doing now is relying too much on harsh administrative orders," she said.
In some ways, the power cuts are backfiring. Han, the manager in Anping, said his wire factory coped by purchasing its own generator. So it still uses power — but from a source that might be dirtier and less efficient.
Booming China passed the United States last year as the world's top energy consumer, according to the International Energy Agency — a report that Beijing angrily rejected.
China also is the biggest source of climate-changing greenhouse gases. As a developing country it is not bound by U.N. climate treaties but has pledged to curb emissions growth, though it says the United States and other advanced economies should do more.
Some of China's biggest companies have been hobbled by the campaign, which is cutting production at a time when Beijing needs to create jobs to sustain a rebound from the global crisis.
Baosteel Group, a major steelmaker, announced Sept. 1 it was shutting down a 2 million-ton-a-year blast furnace in Ningbo, a port city south of Shanghai.
"The suspension could last over three months, causing a loss of 180,000 tons of steel a month," the facility's deputy director, Huang Ming, said in a company statement.
In Jiangsu province, north of Shanghai, factories that make mobile phones, computers and other electronics were ordered to shut down for five days every two weeks, according to Chinese media.
In Hebei province, authorities have imposed energy quotas on factories and threatened violators with fines and a cutoff of power and water supplies, the state-run newspaper Shanghai Securities News said. It said the curbs hit as steelmakers were preparing for a peak production season.
"People in the industry are heartbroken," the newspaper said.
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