China Becomes World's Biggest Energy Consumer
“Powered by years of rapid economic growth, China is now the world's biggest energy consumer, knocking the U.S. off a perch it held for more than a century, according to new data from the International Energy Agency.
China devoured a total of 2,252 million tons of oil equivalent last year, or about 4% more than the U.S., which burned through 2,170 million tons of oil equivalent. The oil-equivalent metric represents all forms of energy consumed, including crude oil, nuclear, coal, natural gas and renewable sources such as hydropower.
The U.S. is still by far the biggest energy consumer per capita.”
GreenTech Opinion:
Three points need to be made about this milestone:
1) The U.S. is still the world’s number one consumer of oil, where it makes up 40% of total energy use. In China, coal absolutely trumps oil as the number one source of energy, with coal covering almost 80% of its energy needs (oil in China represents just under 20% of total energy use).
2) This leads to the related point: the reason for China’s massive coal consumption lies in the simple fact that the country has taken on the role as the world’s manufacturing centre. A full 33% of China’s energy requirements are taken up by the manufacturing of products for the consumers of the developed world, in Europe and North America. As Gregor Macdonald states: “China’s coal consumption is merely our own power consumption, offshored.”
3) Finally, China is responding to this by investing more in renewable energy development than any other country in the world in 2009. One of the companies we cover is involved in this development. If you’d like to learn more about this company, please contact us.
Read the full article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703720504575376712353150310.html?mod=djemalertNEWS
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