AS the summer heated up, civil servants in Beijing had been told to dress down to save on energy, State media said.

With many cities in China facing severe power shortages, the Beijing Municipal Government had told its staff to dress casually for internal meetings so that air-conditioner usage could be kept to a minimum, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Government offices are advised to keep air conditioners at 26 degrees Celsius or higher from July 1 to Aug. 31.

It is the first time that civil servants have been asked to dress in casual clothes instead of formal suits and neckties adopted by most government employees.

In a further effort to conserve energy, the Beijing Municipal Government had also started to use power-efficient light bulbs, Xinhua said.

The changes had cut the cost of electricity at government offices to 80, 000 yuan (US$9,674) a month from about 100,000 yuan, Xinhua said.

Many Chinese cities have been facing power shortfalls as booming industries compete with rising electricity consumption by millions of air conditioners in households.

Unseasonably hot weather over the past two weeks also pushed power consumption to record highs in Beijing, Shanghai and other parts of northern and central China.

Editor: Wing