China is facing a grim situation in energy saving in the first half of 2013 but the energy saving industry has great potentials, said the latest analysis on China's energy-saving emission reduction situation by National development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on Thursday.

Hazy weather has shrouded a quarter of Chinese land and some 600 million people have been affected by the lingering smog since the beginning of this year.

NDRC statistics showed that 1.1 billion tons of standard coal was consumed by industrial enterprises above designated size from January to May this year, an increase of 3 percent over the same period last year. The growth rate was 0.6 percentage points higher than the first quarter and a 0.4 percentage points higher than the same period of last year. Six high-energy-consuming industries' energy consumption grew 4 percent in May and 4.6 percent in April, higher than the 2.2 percent in the first quarter.

NDRC indicated that the current economic has downward pressure; growth rate of the industrial added value turns down. At the same time, industrial energy consumption, electricity consumption and output of high-energy-consuming products kept rising. The conditions are unfavorable for the reduction in energy consumption per unit of GDP.

The NDRC also said the incoherence of local and national statistics seriously affected the fulfillment of national energy-saving target. According to the national statistics, in the first two years of the 12th Five-Year Plan, the national unit of GDP energy consumption decreased by 5.5 percent, which only has completed 32.7 percent of the target and was 7.3 percentage points lower than requirements. However, according to the local statistic, the regional energy consumption of weighted average unit GDP fell by 7.7 percent, 6 percentage points higher than the requirements of the 12th Five-Year Plan, and 13.3 percentage points higher than the national figures.

NDRC said the main target in the second half of the year will be reducing the main pollutant emissions, carrying out the ten measures of air pollution control, and reducing the fine particle pollution (PM2.5), especially in key areas including Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei.