Begin with the fact that coal is destined to remain at the heart of
China’s energy picture for many years to come. Why? Because coal is
one of the few natural resources China has in abundance—China is
the world’s leading producer and consumer of coal—and because coal
fuels much of the national infrastructure, particularly the electricity
and manufacturing sectors. As of 2002, coal accounted for about two-
thirds of China’s total energy consumption and three-quarters of its
greenhouse gas emissions. (The discrepancy stems from the fact that
coal is, of course, the most potent carbon dioxide producer of the fos-
sil fuels.)
From both an environmental and a public health standpoint, using
less coal is clearly essential. Many Chinese might regard this as a
recipe for economic stagnation, but the nation’s recent history sug-
gests otherwise. During the 1980s, as part of the economic reform pro-
gram championed by Deng Xiaoping, China sharply reduced its rate of
coal consumption by increasing its energy efficiency. Because the
energy intensity of China’s economy—that is, the amount of energy
used per unit of Gross National Product (GNP) produced—fell by 30
percent during the 1980s, the economy was able to grow an average of
9 percent a year even as energy consumption grew by only 5 percent a
year.
This remarkable accomplishment was the result of deliberate gov-
ernment policy, implemented in response to the global oil crisis of
- Energy planners realized that China could not hope to produce
or buy enough energy to achieve the quadrupling of the Chinese econ-
omy by 2000 that Xiaoping wanted; the only option was to use energy
more efficiently.
This was true because China’s energy infrastructure was so anti-
quated: Many boilers and machines dated from the 1950s, and some
from the 1930s, and their efficiency was very poor. To fix the problem,
economic restructuring shifted the emphasis of China’s economy from
heavy to light industry. Subsidies and price controls that encouraged
waste by making energy appear cheaper than it actually was were
reduced. The introduction of more advanced boilers, fans, and pumps
in the core electricity, steel, chemicals, concrete, and fertilizer indus-
tries further increased energy efficiency. More visible perhaps to the
18 Mark Hertsgaard