China's energy problem faces two major challenges

On the Energy Conservation and Emissions Reduction Forum held on March 28th in the World Environment Magazine, Dr. He Ping of the Beijing Representative Office of the United Nations Development Program believes that China’s energy issue faces two challenges: rapid energy consumption growth and low energy-saving efficiency.
In explaining the drama of the increase in energy consumption, He Ping said that this situation is very rare in China: In the last 20 years of the last century, China’s energy-saving and emission-reducing achievements were remarkable, and its energy growth rate was only half of GDP growth, from 1980s. Between 2000 and 2000, the average GDP growth in China is about 9.7%, and the average annual energy growth is only 4.6%. In the five years since 2001, China's energy growth suddenly accelerated sharply, reaching an average of 12%, which is higher than GDP growth. On the challenge of energy conservation, He Ping said one of the major problems is that the overall trend of energy-saving investment is declining, especially between 1981 and 2003.
According to reports, the energy consumption of China's unit products is two or three times higher than that of developed countries. The gap between some major industrial equipment in energy conservation and foreign advanced level is about 15% to 20%. If China's unit GDP energy consumption is 1, the world average is 29%, and Japan is currently 10%. In terms of terminal energy consumption ratio, the industry accounts for about 70%. It is disturbing that building energy consumption has also increased in recent years. The figure in previous years is about 20%. The latest released data shows that China’s building energy consumption To account for about 27% of the total terminal energy consumption, the traffic energy consumption has always accounted for 10%, but now it is estimated that it has far exceeded this figure.
What will China's total energy consumption by 2020 be? This has always been the answer sought by various authoritative forecasting agencies. According to the standard of 5.8 tons of standard coal per person per year in Japan, China's energy demand will reach 6 billion tons of standard coal by 2020. According to the United States’ current standard of 11.7 tons, China’s energy demand in 2020 will reach 10 billion tons of standard coal.
How to deal with such a severe energy challenge? He Ping suggested that the rate of GDP growth should be controlled first. Why is China's energy growth so much in the first five years of this century? The factors are very complicated. He Ping thinks that the most important thing is that the annual growth rate of GDP is too high, and the improvement of energy efficiency will not be able to make up for the increase in energy consumption caused by high GDP growth. In addition, He Ping believes that it is also necessary to open the way for energy conservation and emission reduction in policy guidance and incentive measures.