China's power consumption is expected to increase by 3 percent this year, according to the China Electricity Council as cited by state-backed Xinhua News agency.

The growth marks a slow down from last year, when China's power use jumped 5 percent year on year to 5.9 trillion kilowatt hours. Power consumption is used to gauge economic activities in the country. Thus, this confirms China's ongoing restructuring and growth momentum.

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China also saw its economy expand to 6.7 percent in 2016, as it starts to pivot from an export-reliant economy to a service-oriented one.

Last year, China reported progress on its energy efficiency and clean energy levels, with the amount of energy used per unit of GDP dropping to 5 percent.

Clean energy such as hydropower, natural gas, and wind power account for 19.5 percent of China's total energy consumption in 2016, up from 17.9 percent from 2015.

Although the country still sourced over 60 percent of its power from coal, it aims to slash down its dependency to 55 percent by the end of the decade. It also plans to allocate $361 billion in clean energy by 2020, as it targets to shift 20 percent of its power source from non-fossil fuels by 2030.

Meanwhile, China's wind power capacity also grew last year. It had 149 million kilowatts of installed wind power capacity by the end of 2016, with 19.3 million kilowatts added last year the National Energy Administration reported.

The country's wind power facilities generated 241 billion kilowatt hours of electricity last year, accounting to 4 percent of China's total electricity production, up from the 3.3 percent in 2015.

However, it still did not meet its true potential. An estimated 50 billion kilowatt hours of wind power has been wasted, up from the 33.9 billion kilowatt hours in 2015, because of the distribution of wind resources and grid system issues.

TagsChina Power Consumption, renewable resources, CLEAN ENERGY, wind power, coal consumption