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From Overseas Press

China's mammoth consumers may wear off green efforts

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-07-06 10:46
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Beijing's ambitious campaign on national energy efficiency is being overwhelmed by the billion-strong demands of Chinese consumers aspiring to a Western style of living with more cars and creature comforts, the New York Times reported on Monday.

The newspaper acknowledged Beijing's green efforts as the world's most rigorous national energy campaign. It's reported that China -- already the world's biggest investor in green technologies like wind turbines -- has ordered the closure of its inefficient factories by September and dictated tough energy rules for lighting and cars' gas mileage.

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However, Beijing's green campaign is being challenged by the country's 1.3-billion-strong population clamoring for more and bigger cars, electrical home appliances and more creature comforts like air-conditioned shopping malls. As a result, China is actually becoming even less energy efficient, according to the report.

The newspaper observed that rural sales of electricity-dependent household appliances in China, such as refrigerators and washing machines, have more than doubled in the past year thanks to government subsidies. And air-conditioned upscale shopping malls exempt from government thermostat control are proliferating in cities across the country.

More cars are running on the streets as China's auto market soared 48 percent last year, surpassing the American market for the first time, and car sales are rising almost as rapidly again this year.

Besides, according to the report, more coal-fired power plants have been built in China to satiate its voracious power demand, as a sluggish world market is forcing the economy to shift from exports industries like toys and apparel toward energy-hungry steel and cement production, most visible in the frenzied building spree.

Policymakers in Beijing acknowledged in a statement in May that the efficiency gains had started to reverse and actually deteriorated by 3.2 percent in the first quarter of this year, citing a lack of controls on energy-intensive industries.

According to the article, China, with one-fifth of the world's population, is now on track to represent more than a quarter of humanity's energy-related greenhouse-gas emissions. The newspaper quoted Gao Shixian, an energy official at the National Development and Reform Commission, saying, "We really have an arduous task" to reach China's existing energy-efficiency goals.