A provincial capital in southwest China has dimmed outdoor advertisements, subway lighting and building signs to save energy, official announcements said as the region grapples with power shortages caused by record-high temperatures. . The mercury soared more than 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in Sichuan province this week, sparking huge demand for air conditioning and drying up reservoirs in a region dependent on dams for most of its electricity. Factories, including a joint venture with Japanese car giant Toyota, in the provincial capital Chengdu have been forced to halt work, while millions in another city, Dazhou, are battling power cuts.
“The hot and humid weather has pushed the city’s electricity supply to its limits for production and daily life,” Chengdu’s urban management officials said in a notice on social media on Thursday.
Faced with “the most dire situation”, the city – home to more than 20 million people – ordered the shutdown of landscape lights and outdoor advertising lights in a notice issued Tuesday, the statement said.
The name signs of the building will also be darkened.
And Chengdu Metro said in a video on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform that it would also turn off advertising lights and “optimize” temperatures in stations to save energy.
Images circulated on Weibo showed dim lights in metro platforms, walkways and malls, with commuters walking in partial darkness.
State media outlet China News Service reported on Thursday that extreme heat is also drying up the vital Yangtze River, whose water flow on its main trunk is about 51 percent less than the average of the past five years.
Sichuan’s electricity crisis could also have an impact on the wider Chinese economy – the province is a major supplier of energy generated by hydroelectric power, including eastern industrial power stations such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
China is battling extreme weather on several fronts, with 17 people killed on Thursday in flash floods that followed torrential rains in the country’s northwest.
Meanwhile, weather officials in eastern Jiangsu province warned drivers of the risk of tire punctures on Friday as surface temperatures on some roads reached 68 degrees Celsius.
The China Meteorological Administration previously said the country was going through the longest period of sustained high temperatures since records began in 1961.
Scientists say climate change has made extreme weather more frequent around the world and urgent global cooperation is needed to slow the impending disaster.
The world’s two biggest emitters are the United States and China.
But earlier this month Beijing announced an end to its cooperation with Washington on global warming in protest of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
