China Passes U.S. as World's Biggest Energy Consumer, IEA Says  

Bloomberg reports the IEA is saying that China is now the world's largest user of energy (however the Chinese don't agree) - China Passes U.S. as World's Biggest Energy Consumer, IEA Says.

China overtook the U.S. as the world’s biggest energy user last year, emphasizing that developing nations are driving global growth, according to the International Energy Agency.

China consumed 2,252 million metric tons of oil equivalent in 2009 in the form of crude, coal, natural gas, nuclear power and renewable sources, IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol said yesterday. That exceeded the 2,170 million tons used by the U.S.

“It’s one of those major turning points,” Tilak Doshi, the chief economist at the Energy Studies Institute at the National University of Singapore, said in a phone interview. “China is growing by leaps and bounds. You’ve got OECD countries where you’re talking about oil demand peaking, meanwhile the emerging countries like China and India will keep growing their energy demand.”

China’s gross domestic product expanded 10.3 percent in the second quarter even as the government took measures to cool growth. China, with Hong Kong included, was the biggest energy user in 2009, consuming 2.2 billion tons of oil equivalent, BP Plc said in its annual Statistical Review of World Energy in June. The U.S. was second and Russia ranked third, BP said.

“As China overtakes the U.S. as the world’s largest energy consumer, it is not only a domestic issue for China, but has repercussions for the rest of the world not only in supply terms, but also in how the energy is consumed,” Birol said in an interview by phone from Paris. “If China uses electric cars, hybrids and so on, they will impose the manufacturing line on most of the rest of the world.”

China Skeptical

The IEA’s data are “not very credible,” Zhou Xi’an, head of the National Energy Administration’s general office, said at a media briefing in Beijing today, without elaborating.

At the same time China increases its use of fossil fuels, it is boosting renewable energy projects. The nation may spend about 5 trillion yuan ($738 billion) in the next decade developing cleaner sources of energy to reduce emissions from burning oil and coal, Jiang Bing, head of the National Energy Administration’s planning and development department, said in Beijing today.

China’s oil imports gained 48 percent last year and have almost doubled since 2005, according to customs data. The nation increased net crude imports to a record 22.1 million tons in June, or about 5.4 million barrels a day, customs figures show.

Global oil supplies will become “tighter” after 2015 as a result of declining production outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and growing control of reserves by state-run producers, Birol said.