Chinese market for clean technology

“First become rich, and then clean up: China with its 1.3 billion people cannot afford that.”
Pan Yue, Vice-Minister for environment

Since 2000 China’s primary energy consumption has been rising at a rate of 15% p.a. and was 1.2 billion toe by 2003 - 13% of world consumption. By 2020 China is expected to double its energy demand again and become the biggest consumer worldwide. Meanwhile energy efficiency is at very low level: the Chinese economy consumes about 4.6 times more energy per US$ GDP than the average of the OECD countries.
China currently generates 70% of its primary energy from coal, making it the largest consumer of coal worldwide. Eight out of ten of the most polluted cities in the world are Chinese, causing high levels of asthma and other pollution related diseases.

The Chinese government is fully aware of the social and economic cost of Chinas environmental problems: China plans to increase the contribution of Renewables to energy supply from 7% to 15% over the next 15 years.
Based on the huge potential for renewable energies and energy efficiency measures China is regarded as the biggest potential host country for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects under the Kyoto protocol.