com world china china-q 3 - gdp-growth - has - 1 - year-low raising-heat - policymakers - 2021 - 10- 17 its slowest in one year, while surging coal prices threaten more pain for Chinese industry and global supply chains.
Companies in Europe have reduced outlooks amid global bottlenecks, while European gas prices, still more than 350% higher than at the beginning of 2021, has forced more power supply companies throughout the region to buckle.
Suppliers in other European markets, including Britain, have also folded in recent weeks because of the surge in energy prices.
The power provider Ohm Energy announced on its website that it had exited the retail electricity market in Singapore on Friday, the third company to do so in recent weeks.
To ease China's economic crisis, Beijing has taken a raft of steps to boost output of coal, which fuels approximately 60% of its power plants. But data on Monday showed that steps were taking time to feed through https: www.reuters.com. com Welt china power woes may worsen demand - growth - peaking - coal-supply shortage lag - 2021 - 10 18 while demand for power continued to surge.
That means September output averaged 11.14 million tonnes a day, Reuters calculation showed, compared with figures released by Beijing last week saying daily output was more than 11.2 million tonnes, only slightly higher despite China's efforts.
The Chinese government is losing the battle to control soaring coal prices, said Wood Mackenzie, head of Asia Pacific power and renewables research, Alex Whitworth.
Despite efforts to increase coal supply, output decreased in September due to weather, safety and logistics challenges. Both China failed to overcome the booming power demand. In the third quarter, data showed power constraints contributed to slowing growth in China. The world's second biggest economy grew 4.9%, its slowest pace since the third quarter of 2020 and from 7.9% in the second quarter.
Shortages of domestic coal have driven fuel prices higher for Chinese power generators, causing unprofitable firms to ration power to industrial users and forcing some factories to suspend production, disrupting global supply chains.
Europe is among those to feel the pinch, with the energy crunch adding to challenges such a shortage of memory chips and a lack of shipping containers.
Health technology firm Philips is the latest to trim its outlook for sales and profit growth in 2021, saying a global shortage of electronic components had hit third-quarter earnings. It was also hit by a recall of respiratory devices.
Supply chain volatility has intensified globally, CEO Frans van Houten said. We expect this headwind to continue in the fourth quarter. Fuel prices remain near three-year highs with oil trading on Monday near $85 a barrel and on more than 60% this year.
The European gas benchmark may have dropped from this month's peak but is still up more than 350% this year.
Russia, which supplies about a third of Europe's gas, has said it is prepared to pump more but Russian officials also have said that Europe could ease its supply crunch and red-hot prices by giving a greenlight to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.
The pipeline executed by Russia, which will double Russia's export capacity to Germany via the Baltic Sea, said on Monday it had taken a further step to prepare for the start-up.
Approval to start operations, however, could be months away for the project which Moscow and some European countries oppose, concerned it will make Europe even more dependent on Russian energy.