China's state planner the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has urged some regions and provinces to tighten energy efficiency controls after they lagged targets in the first quarter, it said on Thursday.

During a video conference, the NDRC's Director of Environmental Protection and Resource Conservation Liu Dechun reiterated to representatives from Zhejiang, Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang the need to meet annual energy consumption objectives, the planner said.

These areas all recorded a rise in energy consumption and intensity in the first quarter instead of a drop, it added.

China's so-called "dual controls" on energy consumption and energy intensity - or the amount of energy consumed per unit of GDP - have taken on added significance since President Xi Jinping in September committed the country to peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and becoming carbon neutral by 2060.

In March China's Inner Mongolia region, which missed its annual targets in 2019, said it would stop approving energy-intensive projects after coming under pressure to cut energy usage. 

The region's aluminium hub of Baotou also ordered some industrial production and power plants to shut down, sending prices SAFcv1 of the metal higher. 

"It is necessary to vigorously promote key energy-saving and carbon-reduction projects, and accelerate the energy-saving transformation of key industries", as well as to speed up elimination of outdated capacity, the NDRC said.

Those key industries included steel, nonferrous metals and petrochemicals, it said.

Xinjiang and Yunnan are also key aluminium producing regions in China, the world's biggest metals consumer.

(Reporting by Tom Daly; Editing by Jan Harvey) ((tom.daly@thomsonreuters.com; +86 10 5669 2119;))