Energía

Sustainable Energy Watch 2005/2006

Energy and Sustainable Development in China

Report by: Jiahua Pan and Xianli Zhu Email: jiahuapan@163.com zhuxl@263.net

Summary of Report
China’s main indigenous energy resources are coal, with a small reserve of oil and natural gas, as well as hydropower resources. Currently renewable energy accounts for less than 8% of China’s energy mix. The Chinesegovernment has set the ambitious target of increasing the share of hydropower, wind power, solar power and other renewables to 15% by 2020.

HELIO International / CHINA

2

Preface
This Sustainable Energy Watch report is prepared by Prof. Jiahua PAN and Xianli ZHU from the Research Centre for Sustainable Development, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In the process of preparing thisreport, the biggest problem was data availability. Like in other developing countries, statistics are often incomplete and not readily available. For example, in the official energy statistics released by the Chinese government, the data on renewable energy is only limited to medium and large hydropower. Among the 750 million Chinese rural residents, many are still using firewood and stalk as thefuel for cooking and heating. Traditional use of biomass, biogas, small hydropower, solar thermal water heaters, PVs, geothermal, and wind power contribute 232.4 Mtoe of clean energy, however they are neglected in the official statistics. Data about investment is also lacking. One indicator is the burden of public investment. However, in China, the economy used to completely consist of State-ownedenterprises and collective enterprises, the State-owned enterprises lack decision-making rights and all investment, production, and management decisions were made by the government. Therefore, the energy investment of state-owned enterprises could be regarded as state investment. However, over the years, the ownership structure of Chinese economy has becoming increasingly complicated. Not only isthe role of private sector and foreign-funded enterprises improving, mixed ownership is more and more common. Today listed companies contribute around 1/3 of the industrial enterprises’ output but it is difficult to say whether they are state-owned or not. To make it simple, in the calculation of this indicator, investment by State-owned enterprises is used, however this may be imprecise. Ideally,2006 China renewable energy watch should be based on the 2004 data and the base year should be 1990. However, due to lack of data, in some cases data for 2002 and 2003 are used to indicate the current status. Another problem is inaccuracy of the data, especially with the indicator energy-related local pollutants. The Chinese government has monitored the ambient air quality of more than 379 Chinesecities (this accounts for 57% of the 661 cities in China). In recent years, many large Chinese cities have carried out air pollution control measures, one of them is moving polluting enterprises to the outskirts of large cities or to small cities and rural areas, where the emission control is not less rigid. Thus, while the official statistics show that the ambient air quality in the citiesmonitored has improved significantly since 1990 statistics also show that during the same period,

HELIO International / CHINA

3

China’s total emissions of SO2 and suspended particulates have increased substantially. Under such circumstances, total emissions may be a more accurate indicator of Chinese sustainable energy performance. Generally, through extensively gathering data from varioussources, comparing them, and selecting the most plausible ones, the analysis presented in this report offers an accurate profile of the energy sustainability in China: in the course of rapid economic development, China has made remarkable achievements in improving its energy sustainability. However, in view of its coal-dominated energy endowment and robust economic growth, energy security and...