Mar 9 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Jack Z. Smith Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas



As a panel of experts pondered the energy world of the future at a posh downtown hotel Monday afternoon, one word persistently cropped up.

That, of course, was China, which has the world's largest population and an emerging economy with wildly surging energy demand that not even the global Great Recession has reined in.

China, with more than 1.3 billion people, is already the world's largest producer of heavily polluting coal and the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, blamed for global warming. But the Asian giant also "could well become the world's largest market for clean energy," said Rob Barnett of IHS CERA, based in Cambridge, Mass.

 Barnett was among nine global energy experts from IHS CERA making up the panel at the opening day of the CERA Week 2010 Energy Conference at the Hilton Americas Hotel. IHS CERA is a leading international adviser to energy companies, financial institutions and governments.

While U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide increased 23 percent from 1990 to 2007, China's emissions jumped 156 percent in the same period, Barnett said.

China, which faces increasing pressure to curb emissions, has set a goal to reduce its "greenhouse gas intensity" by 40 to 45 percent per unit of gross domestic product, compared with 2005, Barnett said.

But given the country's enormous economic growth and corresponding escalation in energy demand, it might need to build five or six nuclear plants each year and make huge additions in its wind-power capacity, he said.

World energy demand doubled in the past 35 years, with China accounting for about one-quarter of the increase, said Xizhou Zhou, an IHS CERA associate and China expert. Still, the United States, with less than one-fourth China's population, remains the world's largest energy consumer.

As China's economy and energy demand continue to mushroom, its dependence on foreign energy supplies will increase "in almost all energy sectors," Zhou said.

Although a huge coal producer, China "is now importing coal" from as far away as Canada and South Africa, Zhou said.

In addition, Chinese oil and natural gas drilling rigs "are starting to move into Russia," said Thane Gustafson, an IHS CERA senior director with a heavy focus on Russia.

Jone-Lin Wang, an IHS CERA managing director who specializes in global power demand, forecast that China's electricity demand will grow "at a good 6 to 7 percent" annually "for the next two decades," compared with annual growth of about 1.4 percent in the U.S. in that period.

The energy conference will focus today on the oil industry and Wednesday on the natural gas industry, with speakers including U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

JACK Z. SMITH, 817-390-7724

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