China will not follow the US energy consumption model because
energy resources are limited, said Xu Dingming, vice director of
the Office of the National Energy Leading Group.
Xu made the remark at an MIT Energy Forum in Shanghai on
Tuesday. He said if Chinese people consumed energy like their US
counterparts, China would need 4.5 billion tons of oil per year.
However, the annual global oil supply is just four billion tons
with only 1.6 billion tons in commercial circulation.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, Chinese citizens
owned nearly 30 million private cars at the end of last year.
With annual oil consumption of two tons per vehicle and a 20
percent growth in car numbers per year, the transportation sector
could become a large energy consumer in the future, warned the
official.
Xu pointed out that westerners account for only 15 percent of
the world's population but used the lion's share of the world's
energy to power their industrial processes.
China cannot follow the wasteful western model, said Xu, but
would have to invent a cleaner, more effective energy consumption
model of its own.
Reproducible energies are strongly recommended by experts and
conservationists. China plans to raise the proportion of
reproducible energies in its total energy consumption to 16 percent
by 2020.
(Xinhua News Agency April 4, 2007)