China's energy planning demands an integrated perspective.

What contributions can energy efficiency and renewable energy make to China’s development goals? What are the employment impacts of different energy policies? What are the public health costs associated with coal- or oil-dominated energy development? The Low-Carbon Development Paths Program (LCDP) focuses on developing analytic tools to help China’s energy planners anticipate the future impacts of today’s policy decisions. LCDP supports the development of sustainable energy scenarios and the policies necessary to achieve them, as well as analyses of “all-in” social and public health costs associated with China’s energy policy decisions. LCDP has supported scenarios for China’s carbon emissions over the 2000-2020 time frame, and articulation of the policies necessary for achieving cost-effective carbon reductions.

China’s long-term plans call for the country to quadruple GDP while only doubling energy use over the 2001-2020 period. Five years into that 20-year period, the goal is already in jeopardy: from 2001 to 2005, energy consumption grew at 1.2-1.5 times the rate of GDP. Such a low-efficiency development pattern is wholly unsustainable; it requires enormous energy input (which in China is predominantly heavy-polluting coal), consumes a vast amount of resources, and endangers the environment and public health. >

Energy in China is growing faster than the country’s GDP, presenting a huge global warming challenge.

Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.