Pollution and Prosperity
Posted on November 27th, 2006
by Paul Maidment
Forbes: China set up a state agency to tackle the damage its rapid industrialization was doing to the environment as long ago as 1998. But as China’s economy continues to grow, so does the country’s energy consumption, and with it the scale of the challenge that the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) faces.
One measure of how fast the country’s energy demands are growing is its oil needs. China’s 2006 oil consumption is forecast to increase by almost half a million barrels per day from last year’s volumes, or 38% of the total growth in world oil demand. China is the world’s third-largest net importer of oil, behind the U.S. and Japan.