China big opportunityChina announces new economic goals to curb carbon output, use of energy, water
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EmailPrint..The Associated Press, On Monday March 28, 2011, 5:44 am EDT
By The Associated Press
BEIJING, China - China has issued new targets to curb carbon output and improve efficiency in using energy and water, state media reported Monday.
A government official announced that China aims to reduce energy use and carbon emissions per unit of economic output this year by 4 per cent, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The government also wants to reduce water use per unit of output by 7 per cent this year, Zhou Changyi, an official in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said during a conference in Nanjing.
China's government says it successfully completed a five-year effort last year to reduce energy use per unit of output by nearly 20 per cent from 2005 levels.
Meeting the energy efficiency target was seen as a key marker of China's commitment toward fighting global warming. It has surpassed the United States as the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, largely because its economic development over the past three decades has relied on labour- and energy-intensive growth.
The new cuts are part of China's wider plan to reduce both energy consumption and carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 18 per cent over the next five years, said Deputy Minister Su Bo. The government pledged a 30-per cent reduction in water consumption per unit of GDP over the same period, he said.
The targets are slightly higher than what China had pledged to do in its 12th Five-Year Plan released earlier this year during its annual congress. In the original plan, energy use and carbon emissions would be cut by 16 per cent while water use would come down by 25 per cent.