‘China has overtaken the U.S. as world’s largest energy user’
“China is now the largest energy consumer by our definition,” the China-bashing Japanese head of the discredited International Energy Agency (IEA), Nobuo Tanaka, reported.
“Probably half of the oil demand increase comes from China. Nobody knows when it (will) slow down.”
A Chinese energy official has since rejected the claim made by the Japanese director of the IEA.
“IEA’s data on China’s energy use is unreliable,” Zhou Xian, an official at China’s National Energy Administration (NEA), told reporters.
IEA says China consumed 2.252 billion tons of oil equivalent (toe) in 2009, compared with United State’s 2.17 billion tons.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported in February that the country’s 2009 energy consumption was 3.1 billion tons of standard coal equivalent, or 2.132 billion tons of oil equivalent.
Regardless of the bitching and hysterics, the fact remains that between them the two energy tyrannosaurs are devouring the planet into oblivion, jointly consuming about 43 percent of the world’s energy output.
Editor’s Notes:
1. The IEA (OECD) defines one toe as 41.868 gigajoules (GJ) , or 11.63 MWh.
2. A ton of coal equivalent (TCE) has a conventional value of 7 gigacalories, or 29.3076 GJ.
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