China surpasses U.S. in energy consumption

China now consumes the most energy worldwide, surpassing the United States which held the global record for more than a century, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The United States used 2,170 million tons of oil equivalent last year, about 4% less than the 2,252 million tons of oil equivalent consumed by China, according to the story, which cites new data from the Paris-based International Energy Agency. The oil-equivalent measure includes all forms of energy such as oil, nuclear, coal, natural gas and renewable sources.

"The global recession hit the U.S. more severely than China and hurt American industrial activity and energy use," the story say, but it also notes that China's energy use has posted annual double-digit growth rates for years. A decade ago, it consumed half as much energy as the United States.

"The fact that China overtook the U.S. as the world's largest energy consumer symbolizes the start of a new age in the history of energy," IEA chief economist Fatih Birol told the Journal. He said the U.S. had been the biggest overall energy consumer since the early 1900s. The story adds:

China's voracious energy demand helps explain why the country—which gets most of its electricity from coal, the dirtiest of fossil-fuel resources—passed the U.S. in 2007 as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases.

The U.S. is still by far the biggest energy consumer per capita, with the average American burning five times as much energy annually as the average Chinese citizen, said Mr. Birol, who has been in his current role for six years.

The U.S. also is the biggest oil consumer by a wide margin, going through on average roughly 19 million barrels a day—with China at a distant second at about 9.2 million barrels a day. But many oil analysts believe U.S. crude demand has peaked or is unlikely to grow very much in coming years because of improved energy efficiency and more-stringent vehicle fuel-efficiency regulations.

Prior to the recession, China had been expected to become the biggest energy consumer in about five years, but the economic malaise and energy-efficiency programs in the U.S. brought forward the date of that superlative, Mr. Birol said.

The decreased energy "intensity" of the U.S. economy is a key reason investors, such as General Electric Co., have increasingly looked to China as a driver of future growth. Mr. Birol said China requires total energy investments of some $4 trillion over the next 20 years to keep feeding its economy and to avoid power blackouts and fuel shortages.