China’s Energy Demand

IMPROVING ENERGY INTENSITY IS PROVING A DAUNTING TASK IN THE WORLD’S MOST POPULOUS NATION

China, like India, is a nation of staggering population – well over 1.0 billion people – that is careening into the modern industrial age. In this report by Gordon Feller, it is clear that China recognizes the need to “leapfrog” the technologies of the west, in order to avoid resource scarcity and hideous pollution. But how feasible is this?
There are several measures of leapfrogging – what is China’s CO2 footprint, what is their energy intensity, and how much are they removing pollutants during energy production? Only in the past year have economists generally acknowledged that China has now replaced the USA as the world’s greatest producer of industrial CO2. Is this just the beginning?

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, China relies on coal for 70% of their energy needs. EIA projections indicate that consumption of coal in China will nearly double in the next twenty years, and that if anything, the percentage of energy usage represented by coal in China is going to increase. Activists who want to shut down American industry need to remember two things: Over 90% of the fuel consumed in the world requires combustion, and the Chinese (and many other nations) are not going to shut down their industries just because we want them to.

Similarly, China’s (and India’s) energy intensity – how many units of energy they require to produce one unit of wealth – is currently only 25% as efficient as the United States or the European Community. Moreover, in their headlong rush to industrialize, China’s energy intensity has actually worsened in the last year, not improved.

The average American consumes 12 times as much energy and 4 times as much water as the average Chinese person – in spite of the fact that China’s energy intensity is only 25% as efficient as the America’s. If China were able to equal the U.S. or EU in energy intensity, and perhaps they will, and if at the same time their per-capita income were to equal that of the Americans, then China’s energy production would have to increase by a factor of 8x. As it is, projections from the EIA only show their energy production doubling between now and 2020. These projections could be low.

It is in the final measure of leapfrogging where we might find the greatest reason to hope. While unenthralled by the notion that industrial CO2 causes global warming – and recent findings indicate tropical deforestation might actually be a bigger cause of global warming – the Chinese are very concerned about the dangerous criteria pollutants they are spewing into into the atmosphere. But, unlike CO2, most forms of air pollution from industry can now be effectively removed at an affordable cost. Perhaps if the western nations joined to help the Chinese develop clean burning fossil fuel, it would be a great – and feasible – leap forward.

Ecoworld