China is expected to become the world's largest energy consumer

According to China Voices News and Newspaper Abstracts, China may become the world's largest energy consumer in the 12th Five-Year Plan period. Zhang Guobao, director of the National Energy Administration, also reminded reporters that the development path of increasing supply of coal and continuously increasing energy consumption will be difficult to sustain. The “12th Five-Year Plan” will vigorously adjust the energy structure and reasonably control the total energy consumption. Zhang Guobao predicts that China’s total energy consumption this year will likely exceed that of the United States.

Zhang Guobao: “The total energy consumption in China and the United States is almost the same. The gap between it and China is not big enough, and it is a little bit worse. The top hat of the largest consumer country may be worn on our heads.”

However, China's energy consumption structure is not reasonable. In developed countries, coal accounts for more than 30% of total energy consumption, and China is the opposite.

Zhang Guobao: "China is clean energy, including oil and natural gas. Together with other energy sources, it may account for 30%. Coal accounts for nearly 70%, just as the energy structure of developed countries is reversed."

And since 2008, China has already become a net importer from a net exporter of traditional coal, and imports have increased year by year. For example, China imports about 44 million tons of coal from Australia each year, ranking first, and starting in 2009 it imports about 10 million tons from Russia. Zhang Guobao said that the rapid growth of coal consumption may be difficult to reverse in the short term.

Zhang Guobao: “If the trend develops, by the end of the twelfth five-year period, coal consumption will reach 4 billion tons. By that time, China’s coal consumption will account for about 50% of global coal production. This will bring a series of problems.”

In the 12th Five-Year Plan, one of the core tasks of energy development will be to vigorously adjust the energy structure and reasonably control the total energy consumption.

Zhang Guobao: "In accordance with the scientific development concept, we must embark on a new path of economic development. We must adjust the energy structure and change the mode of energy development. Efforts to control the total energy consumption at the end of the twelfth five-year plan should be at 4.1 billion tons of standard coal."

At the same time, we will vigorously develop clean energy such as nuclear power. Nuclear power accounts for 9% of the world's primary energy, while China accounts for less than 1%. Zhang Guobao said that US nuclear power installed more than 100 million kilowatts, a total of 104 reactors, while China has only 13 reactors, adding only 10 million kilowatts.

Zhang Guobao: "To tell the truth, I, as the Secretary of Energy, are in a hurry for the slow development of nuclear power. At this stage, there is no nuclear power and there is no way out."

Zhang Guobao pointed out that in the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” China must develop safer and more efficient nuclear power technologies, accelerate the development of coastal nuclear power, actively promote inland nuclear power projects, and form nuclear power brands with independent intellectual property rights.