Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on January 29, 2013
China consumes nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined
Coal consumption in China grew more than 9% in 2011, continuing its upward trend for the 12th consecutive year, according to newly released international data. China’s coal use grew by 325 million tons in 2011, accounting for 87% of the 374 million ton global increase in coal use. Of the 2.9 billion tons of global coal demand growth since 2000, China accounted for 2.3 billion tons (82%). China now accounts for 47% of global coal consumption—almost as much as the entire rest of the world combined.
Robust coal demand growth in China is the result of a more than 200% increase in Chinese electric generation since 2000, fueled primarily by coal. China’s coal demand growth averaged 9% per year from 2000 to 2010, more than double the global growth rate of 4% and significantly higher than global growth excluding China, which averaged only 1%.
11 Comments on "China consumes nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined"
GregT on Tue, 29th Jan 2013 9:30 pm
What we have done in the developed nations is exported our energy use to China in order for them to manufacture cheap consumer goods for us.
Shaved Monkey on Tue, 29th Jan 2013 11:31 pm
Outsourcing of manufacture,production,labour,generating and polluting.
SOS on Tue, 29th Jan 2013 11:50 pm
I guess of you want to be a coal salesman you should speak Chinese and if you want to export jobs to China you should be a socialist or environmentalist working on stricter regulation and higher taxes here at home?
GregT on Wed, 30th Jan 2013 12:50 am
Sorry SOS,
It wasn’t socialists or environmentalists that exported all of the jobs to China. Just the usual capitalists looking for a profit above all else.
GregT on Wed, 30th Jan 2013 1:03 am
Oh, and you could always to move to China and get paid 6 dollars a day while living in a city so polluted that that you can’t even breath.
Other on Wed, 30th Jan 2013 1:04 am
So if China produced 3.8 billion tons of Coal and Rest of the World produced 4.3 billion tons, then the total comes to 8.1 billion tons.
Even at 50% Oil Equivalent in energy terms, World Coal Consumption is 4.05 billion tons and that’s certainly more than Oil.
Plantagenet on Wed, 30th Jan 2013 1:15 am
When it comes to CO2 emissions and greenhouse warming, China is the main culprit in the world today.
Its really too bad that Obama screwed up the UN climate treaty negotiations with China in Copenhagen in 2009. Obama just isn’t very good at negotiating, with Republicans or the Chinese or the Israelis or the Iranians or pretty much anybody, unfortunately for the rest of us.
BillT on Wed, 30th Jan 2013 1:23 am
The per capita use of coal is still greater in the US than in China. We use about 20% MORE coal per person than China and China now makes most of the goods sold here and in much of the world.
These articles are part of the new ‘war’ on China. You will read all kinds of negative ‘news’ about China as the Empire ramps up it’s hate China propaganda campaign. Keep it in perspective. China is 1,328,000,000 people to our 312,000,000 or about 4 times our number.
DC on Wed, 30th Jan 2013 1:39 am
Sorry to burst your bubble there Plant, but it was your US corporations working behind the scenes that torpedoed any chance of an agreement. Your President Obomber had little or no input. His only role there was to frown and look concerned.
Besides I am curious, one article you rail about clean(er) energy tech being tantamount to a commie plot to destroy mankind, the next, its Obombers fault for not doing enough to save the environment.
Which is it you actually prefer again? I cant tell…
As for China’s being the ‘culprit’ you must not look at just whose corporations all that Made in China crud is being manufactured *for*. Only some of the biggest names in amerikan retail and just about every blue-chip\fortune 500 complany that exists. No, China made a deal with the devil, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. But in there defence, they were doing exactly what ‘our’ corps paid them to do. Things they couldn’t(but wanted to) get away with here in North America, right?
Dmyers on Wed, 30th Jan 2013 4:38 am
After all these years, the US has a major competitor in energy squandering. Ah, it’s beginning to look like not everyone can live like US while we’re living like US. We’re three or four Earth’s short of enough, and we can’t even find another Earth’s worth on Mars. Looks like the Americanization of china is going to be the Chinatization of America.
Kenz300 on Wed, 30th Jan 2013 3:07 pm
Climate change is real no matter what the oil and coal companies say……
Unless the world stops building coal fired power plants
we will not tackle the climate change problem.
China has started investing in safe, clean alternative energy sources. They need to speed up the transition.