China to Maintain Zero Growth in Energy Consumption by 2040

China will maintain zero growth in energy consumption by 2040, said vice minister of the State Development Planning Commission Zhang Guobao recently.

The country needs to restrict annual growth in energy consumption to 2.5-percent in the coming years, so as to achieve the long-term goal, Zhang said.

By 2040, China's total consumption of primary energy resources will rise by 300-percent to equal 3.86 billion tons of standard coal, while the maximum domestic supply will be equal to 3.2 billion tons of standard coal per year.

China's proven reserves of coal, crude oil and natural gas account for 11 percent, 2.4 percent and 1.2 percent respectively of the world's total.

China's per capita volume of each of the three resources, however, is less than half of the world' average, because of the country's large population, which accounts for some 20 percent of the world's total.

It is therefore critical for China to address the supply bottleneck by improving the structure of its energy supply and increasing energy utilization efficiency, Zhang said.

New Energy Stressed in China's Strategy for Next Five Years

New energy resources and renewable sources of energy will become the key field in the China 's energy strategy in the coming five years, sources with the State Development Planning Commission said Friday, August 10.

According to a plan the commission has drafted for the development of energy, China will import more advanced overseas technologies to localize and industrialize the production of wind power generating units.

By the year 2005, the proportion of coal in the consumption of primary energy is expected to drop by 3.88 percentage points from that of the year 2000, and clean energy like natural gas and hydro- electric power will increase by 5.6 percentage points.

In the next five years, China will have an average annual growth rate of 13.19 percent in the production of natural gas, 8. 38 percent in that of hydropower and 29.67 percent in that of nuclear power.






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