Berkeley Lab: China’s Energy Use Will Level Off

By San Francisco Business Times

Though it seems logical that energy use and pollution in China will grow and grow as the giant country’s economy booms, new research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says that ain’t necessarily so.

The Lab’s China Energy Group believes the Middle Kingdom’s energy consumption will level off well before 2050.

“I think that is very good news,” says Mark Levine, one of the authors of the report, “China’s Energy and Carbon Emissions Outlook to 2050.”

Though China overtook the United States as the world’s largest producer of carbon dioxide pollution in 2007, it “has taken serious actions to reduce its energy and carbon intensity,” the report says.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, on the eucalyptus forested hill above the University of California, Berkeley, campus, has also worked for several years to improve its models of how China uses energy.

As China shifts from coal burning power plants towards nuclear power and as electric cars become more widespread, it will pollute much less than it does now.

The China Energy Group now thinks that, rather than continuing to grow more and pollute more for the rest of the century, China’s energy use and pollution will peak around 2030 as its population growth slows. The group says if China takes “aggressive” steps, its greenhouse gas emissions (which cause global warming) from China will peak at 9.7 billion metric tons in 2027, and then fall thereafter, hitting about 7 billion metric tons at mid-century.

Even a more conservative change would have the country peak at 12 billion metric tons in 2033 and then fall to about 11 billion by 2050.

The report could cool some popular anger towards China in the United States and other countries, where the company’s rapid growth has been blamed for serious issues like using too much of the world’s oil and raw materials, or even, less seriously, for a spike in world coffee prices.

Read the full report at Berkeley Lab’s website.

Copyright 2011 American City Business Journals

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