East China's Zhejiang province consumed 483 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2020, up 2.62 percent year on year, according to the latest data from State Grid Zhejiang Electric Power Co.

Annual per capita electricity consumption in the province stood at 8,327 kilowatt-hours, and Ningbo replaced Hangzhou as the province's top electricity consuming city.

The annual electricity consumption of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries grew by 1.67 percent, 1.87 percent, and 2.02 percent, respectively.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the province's monthly electricity consumption plummeted 20.23 percent year on year in January 2020, while the figure in February saw an even larger year-on-year decrease of 22.36 percent.

After work and production began resuming in China, electricity consumption increased. It was down just 6.9 percent in March and 0.84 percent in April.

In May, the figure turned positive and has remained so ever since.

Zhejiang's garment industry, the hardest hit by the pandemic, consumed 9.26 percent less electricity in 2020 than in 2019, while electricity consumption in Shaoxing, the province's most important textile manufacturing hub, fell by 1.94 percent year-on-year.

Among all Zhejiang cities at or above prefecture-level, only Shaoxing and Hangzhou saw a decrease in electricity consumption in 2020, while Zhoushan saw a staggering 57.85-percent increase. The city's commercial power consumption soared as much as 148 percent, which is largely attributed to the start of mass production at a first-phase petrochemical project on Yushan Island. The plant, run by Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical Co, generated 74.8 billion ($11.6 billion) yuan in output last year, making up nearly half of the city's total industrial output.