North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region is seeing a marked improvement in the structure of its energy industry, as well as increasing economic contribution by the sector to the region’s economy, according to local officials.

Statistics from the government department showed that last year, the added value of the energy industry in the autonomous region increased by 5.2 percent, accounting for 57.7 percent of the industries above a designated size.

The energy industry’s realized taxed revenue and profits increased by 19.1 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively, accounting for 67.3 percent and 64.5 percent of the industries above a designated size.

Meanwhile, Inner Mongolia now produces of 1.34 billion metric tons of coal annually, accounting for one quarter of the country's total production. 

There are a total of 52 coal mines with an annual production of 10 million tons in China, of which 21 mines are in Inner Mongolia, ranking it first in the country.

In the first half of this year, there were 286 raw coal production enterprises above designated size in the autonomous region – those with annual sales above 20 million ($2.9 million) -- with a cumulative production of 470 million tons of raw coal, accounting for 26.2 percent of the national raw coal output.

In 2019, the total annual installed electricity capacity of those facilities with a capacity of 6,000 kilowatts and above was 130.13 million kilowatts, accounting for 6.5 percent of the country's total.

Inner Mongolia’s coal-to-liquids annual production capacity was 1.24 million tons last year, and the coal-to-gas production annual capacity reached 1.73 billion cubic meters.

Officials said that the data showed that the autonomous region plays an important role as a national energy and strategic resources base.

In addition, the autonomous region’s industrial power generation above a designated size in the first half of the year was 261 billion kWh, ranking it first in the country.

Of this, the electricity power generated by new energy reached 40.8 billion kWh, accounting for 15.6 percent of the total power generation, an increase of 0.6 percentage points on the same period last year.