China puts hard target on energy use

China will impose a hard limit on total energy use, capping consumption from all sources at the equivalent of 4 billion tonnes of coal (TCE) by 2015, the country's former energy chief Zhang Guobao said on Friday. Zhang, who retired earlier this year as head of the National Energy Administration, told the official Xinhua news agency that the energy cap would be a mandatory ceiling in China's 12th five-year plan for 2011 to 2015.
"To have a greener economy, China should trim its dependency on coal," Xinhua cited Zhang as saying in an interview. China is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activity that are causing global warming. The proposed cap still gives China much room to consume more energy, but it could give other nations more confidence that Beijing is serious about conserving energy and slowing emissions growth.
"My understanding is that this total energy consumption cap is focused on coal, and achieving that will depend on how quickly we develop other energy sources," said Lin Boqiang, director of the Center for Chinese Energy Economics Research in Xiamen University, east China. "Controlling China's overall energy consumption will also relieve pressure on international markets, and that will be beneficial in terms of the direction of energy prices."
China's energy use was 3.25 billion tonnes of coal equivalent in 2010, up 5.9 percent year on year, government data showed. It was likely to rise by 4.24 percent annually in 2011-2015, Zhang said. That would take it right up to the 4 billion TCE limit. The energy ceiling could help China in negotiations seeking a new global pact on fighting climate change. Other nations have pressed Beijing to give a firmer idea of when the fast-growing economy's greenhouse gas emissions will peak.
China's emissions have more than doubled since 2000, and have outstripped those of the United States in recent years. In 2009, China's emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from burning coal, oil and gas, reached 7.5 billion tonnes, a rise of 9 percent on the previous year.
"To have an absolute energy target - everyone knows that's mainly a coal consumption target - is already a very big step forward," said Ailun Yang, China campaign manager with Greenpeace. China could add the equivalent of India's current primary energy consumption by 2015 and still meet the target, according to a Reuters calculation based on Zhang's figures and the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. But the cap will be more demanding for China the more its economic growth outpaces the relatively modest 7 percent annual target that the government has set for 2011-2015.