Mikkal Herberg Authors Essay on China's Energy Rise
China’s Energy Rise and the Future of U.S.-China Energy Relations
06/21/2011
Mikkal Herberg,
New America Foundation
China is gradually emerging as a new superpower in global energy markets and energy geopolitics. This reflects the enormous scale of China’s current and future energy and oil consumption, Beijing’s growing energy investments abroad and expanding energy diplomacy, its rising carbon emissions, and China’s emergence as a global leader in clean energy technology development. The scale of China’s energy expansion is quite breathtaking. For example, in the decade to 2010, the increase in China’s energy consumption added the equivalent of two Latin Americas to global energy demand.1 China is now the world’s largest energy consumer exceeding U.S. energy consumption which had led the world for over half a century. China’s oil consumption doubled in the decade of the 1990s and doubled again in the decade to 2010, making it the second largest oil consumer and importer after the U.S. In 2000, China represented only 6% of global oil demand but it has accounted for nearly one-half of global oil demand growth over this past decade and is now the largest vehicle market by annual sales. It is by far the largest coal-based economy, in 2009 consuming three times as much coal annually as the U.S., the second largest coal user. The increase in China’s coal consumption over just the past five years added the equivalent of another U.S. to world coal demand. Not surprisingly China recently surpassed the U.S. as the largest greenhouse gas emitter. On a more positive note, China also is now by far the leader in investment in clean energy and renewables, in 2010 accounting for roughly one-half of global investment in clean energy.
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Mikkal Herberg is a senior lecturer on international and Asian energy at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. He is also the BP Foundation Senior Research Fellow for International Energy at the Pacific Council on International Policy and also serves as research director on Asian energy security at The National Bureau of Asian Research.
