The main reason of unit GDP energy consumption decrease was:

Significant energy-saving effectiveness drove economic structure changes. Positive changes in the economic structure in the first quarter, the proportion of tertiary industry were up by 1.6 percentage points, year-on-year, that of industry sectors decreased 1.9 percentage points year-on-year. The internal industrial structure accounted for about 70 percent of energy consumption developed in the direction of low power. For example, the growth rate of value-added of top six industrial sectors with higher energy consumption narrowed increasing rate amounted to 2.8 percentage points of all above-scale enterprises, reduced 12.5 percentage points over same period of previous year.

Energy efficiency gained further improves. In the key industrial enterprises, annually energy consumption reached and more than 10,000 tons of standard coal, 25 key energy-consuming products, and 108 consumption indicators appeared descending order which over 80 percent. Efficiency of energy conversion processing was booming up. In the first quarter, overall efficiency of various energy conversion processing promoted 1.55 percentage points; five out of eight kinds of energy conversion processing gained improve. Energy recycling of key energy-consuming enterprises reached 19.35 million tons of standard coal, that of recycling utilization rate accounted for 2.25 percent.

Energy consumption of value-added of industrial units in various industrial sectors reduced in general. Energy consumption of unit value-added of 39 major categories above large-scale industrial sector decreased in the first quarter, of which, petroleum and petrochemical industry declined 9.80 percent, that of chemical raw materials industry decreased 14.44 percent, that of building materials industry dropped 8.24 percent, that of iron and steel industry descended 7.51 percent, that of non-ferrous industry fell 16.58 percent, and that of electrical power industry reduced 10.17 percent.

(National Bureau of Statistics May 4, 2009)