Country Review

P.R. CHINA

China is the largest developing country with population of 1.267 billion by the end of 2000, sharing around 21% of the world undertakings. The annual GDP growth rate was close to 10% during 1990 to 2002, and the GDP in 2002 reached 1.213*10 ¹⁵ US$.

However, due to China’s huge population, the per-capita GDP is still only 1000 US$, less than 1/5 of the world average. With economic development, the primary energy consumption increased and hit 10 Btoe in 2002, sharing 10% of the world total, ranking the second in the world, just after the US. However, China’s per-capita energy consumption was only 0.8 toe, less than half of world average, only 0.17 times of the OECD average. China’s energy structure is coal dominated. In 2002, the share of coal, oil, natural gas, hydro and nuclear in the primary energy consumption was 66.6%, 23.6%, 2.7% and 7.2% respectively for China, while 27.1%, 39.3%, 23.1% and 9.9% respectively for the world. The CO2 emission in 2002 was estimated around 900 MtC, ranking second in the world.

China is still in its initial stage of economic and social development. With continued future economic growth, China’s energy consumption will inevitably increase. It is projected that China’s energy demand will increase to 2.5-3.3 Btce with an average of 2.9 Btce by 2020, and around 5 Btce by 2050 with per-capita energy consumption of about 2 tce in 2020 and 3 tce in 2050. With Energy consumption, the total carbon emission increases, although more low-carbon energy like natural gas and non-carbon energy such as hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, biomass and other renewable energy will be developed and utilised. The country area is 9.6 million square kilometers, ranking the third in the world.

Over the past two decades, China has achieved unusually rapid economic development and social emission is expected to increase. Some experts projected that carbon emission in China would exceed the US around 2030, ranking the first in the world.

China’s per-capita oil and natural gas reserves are only 20.1% and 5.1% of the world average level. If carbon sequestration and storage technologies can be applied for enhanced oil and natural gas recovery and enhanced coal bed methane recovery in China, it would have following benefits: 1) to reduce carbon emission; 2) to increase the share of oil and gas use in the primary energy consumption; 3) to improve local environment; 4) to shorten the gap between demand and domestic supply for oil and natural gas.

China has an INCO RTD agreement with EU and is additionally an increasingly important member of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF, see more on www.cslforum.org). At the CSLF ministerial meeting in Melbourne in September 2004, the Chines delegation expressed a strong wish for cooperation on CSS issues, and the EU delegation immediately reciprocated by an invitation for collaboration. As a direct result of the CSLF meeting in question, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology has joined the GeoCapacity initiative as a full project partner.