Opinion

West wastes energy by lecturing China

By John Coulter (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-07-23 14:03

A media report earlier this week said China had overtaken the US as the world's biggest energy consumer. The report was based on an interview with Fatih Birol, chief economist of International Energy Agency (IEA). Although a day later Chinese officials refuted the claim, the Western media were quick to shed crocodile tears over an "energy-hungry dragon". [NEA denies top energy user tag]

As an expatriate whose experiences in China began in 1981 with oil exploration and continues as a researcher on the economy, the environment and energy, it is easy to be annoyed with the Western media's sensationalism.

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The IEA is an anachronism of a previous world. For a start, solar, hydro and wind power are counted as energy consumption, and measured, like all polluting fossil fuels, in tons of oil equivalent (toe). Reporting all energy consumption in oil equivalent is a reflection of gas-guzzling thinking. Other methods - measuring energy in coal equivalents or joules, or weighting use of fuels by polluting effects - will give different results.

The Western press in its race to grab headlines deliberately forgot to say that the 2009 statistics it quoted were only preliminary estimates. And talking of statistics, another set shows that last year an average American consumed 6.95 toe while an average Chinese used only 1.69 toe.

Furthermore, even the Birol interview report says: "The US also remains the biggest oil consumer by a wide margin, going through roughly 19 million barrels a day on average. China, at about 9.2 million barrels a day, runs a distant second."

The West does not grasp the change in vision of the Chinese leadership. There indeed were factories and blast furnaces in China that used to emit disproportionately high volumes of deadly gases into the atmosphere. But the development miracle of the last three decades shocked China itself. The result: In 2007, China wrote into its constitution the pursuit of a new concept in scientific development. In essence, China realized that it could not follow the Western development model of shifting polluting industries to poorer places.

Ma Zhong, professor and environmental scholar at the Renmin University of China and influential adviser to the government, insists that any green field development in China's western and other remote areas must have the best and newest technologies, instead of second-hand equipment trucked from the already more developed areas.

Ironically, the UN Environmental Programme has acknowledged China's world leadership in quests, research and investment in new and clean technologies and their rapid applications to real sites. They have even said that in the next few years China's energy efficiency in fossil fuels and renewable energy would be even more radical than the past 30 years of economic development.

In short, China has leapfrogged Western development and technology and invested in research and development in a way that Western polities could only dream of. The headlines of what was accounted for in 2009 only denigrate China's efforts.

Chinese may wonder why they are lectured to when they think that the US state of California, outranked in GDP by only a dozen countries, has got where it is after 150 years of cowboy exploitation of natural resources and a century of accumulating pollutant emissions. But looking ahead, smart people in policymaking and the government in China have learnt from the West's mistakes and are skipping them. Minister for Science and Technology Wan Gang spent two decades in Germany and rose to be a hands-on division chief of Audi. His passion for auto efficiency now makes American auto energy standards look outdated.

China is a crowded place and traditionally, inefficient energy use has been penalized. For thousands of years Chinese farmers have managed their small plots applying manure and tilling intelligently. American scientist Franklin H. King visited China in 1909 and wrote Farmers of Forty Centuries, lauding their methods of operation that had evolved through a long history of exploring energetic efficiency.

In modern China the crowded population is forced to acknowledge the downsides of energy extravagance. Despite individual desires for big cars, governments at various levels have taxed vehicles according to the size of their engines and doubled parking charges to encourage people to take public transport, which have been upgraded. And there is a vigorous publicity campaign in the country to promote a low-carbon economy.

Education and awareness of the need to be frugal with energy are critical issues for Chinese governments at all levels, for organizations and for individuals. Air conditioning is not a free service. In cars and offices, design of surroundings and a willingness to get along with nature are more important than blind attempts to conquer nature with copious energy.

Does the West still need to lecture China on the need to conserve energy?

The author is an Australian research scholar collaborating with academic and commercial institutions in China.