Shanghai will turn off decorative lights along its famous Bund riverbank for two days starting Monday as a nationwide heatwave sends electricity demands skyrocketing, city authorities said.
Several provinces have announced power outages to meet rising demand, partly as people turned up air conditioning to cope with temperatures as high as 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).
China has been hit by extreme weather patterns this summer, including record temperatures, flash floods and droughts – phenomena scientists have warned are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change.
To conserve electricity, Shanghai authorities said in a statement Sunday they would turn off “landscape lights” at the Bund, the city’s most famous landmark.
According to the notice, decorative lights, billboards and video screens on both sides of the Huangpu River would be turned off on Monday and Tuesday.
According to official data, the heatwave has reduced parts of the Yangtze River, China’s main inland waterway, to unprecedented drought levels.
This has put a lot of pressure on hydroelectric power plants, which power some of the country’s key economic zones.
These include Sichuan, where authorities on Sunday extended industrial power outages and activated their top-level emergency response to deal with the heatwave.
“Since July of this year, the province has faced the most extreme temperatures, the lowest periodic rainfall in history … (and) the highest electricity loads in history,” local authorities said.
Some of the world’s largest automakers — including Japanese giant Toyota and Elon Musk’s Tesla — operate factories in Sichuan.
The province is also home to parts manufacturers that are vital to global auto supply chains.
Many large factories have had to halt work because of the power outages in Sichuan, which were scheduled to end on Saturday but have been extended to Thursday, China’s Caixin News Agency reported.
Analysts have warned that Sichuan’s power problems could have far-reaching implications for the Chinese economy and international supply chains.
The hydroelectric power generated in the province supplies local consumers and factories, but also the industrial power plant provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
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