China’s State Council unveiled its Energy Development Strategy Action Plan on Wednesday, creating a road-map for China’s energy use and development from 2014 to 2020. The complete Chinese-language document can be found here, with an English summary also available courtesy of Xinhua.
According to the plan, China will cap its annual primary energy consumption at an amount equivalent to 4.8 billion tons of standard coal. That means energy usage in China must grow by only 3.5 percent or less each year from now until 2020. The plan also announced a goal of capping total coal use at roughly 4.2 billion tons by 2020. For comparison, China burned 3.6 billion tons of coal in 2013; that means China can increase its coal usage by roughly 17 percent from 2013 levels before reaching the cap.
As part of its plan to reduce reliance on coal, the State Council set a goal of raising the percentage of the total energy mix supplied by clean energy to 15 percent by 2020. Currently, clean energy accounts for just under 10 percent of China’s total energy usage. Last week, in a joint climate change announcement issued with the U.S., Beijing announced an ambitious plan to have 20 percent of its total energy come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. By 2020, China wants to have 10 percent of its energy supplied from natural gas while lowering the overall share of coal to 62 percent from the current level of 66 percent.
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