The action plan does not specify how much the crude steel output in 2024 will be trimmed from the 2023 level. But it says the steel industry needs to reduce 20 million mt standard coal equivalents of energy consumption in total in the period of 2024-25.

That means if there is no breakthrough in energy-saving technologies, China’s crude steel output by 2025 will need to be reduced by over 30 million mt from the 2023 level of 1.019 billion mt, in order to achieve the energy saving target, according to some market sources.

But they added that this amount of output reduction is not difficult to achieve due to falling steel demand.

Due to sluggish domestic steel demand, China’s crude steel output over January-April was already down by 10.6 million mt from the same period of 2023, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

China’s crude steel output is likely to fall below the 2023 level in 2024, and drop even further in 2025, even without government -mandated output cuts, some market source said.