China Surpassing U.S. as Largest Energy Consumer Is the Story of the Past Decade

years, has now been surpassed as the world’s No. 1 energy consumer. IEA Paris, following the BP Statistical Review in June, has decided to call this race in favor of China. However, this is really not a story of today. Rather, it’s a story of the past decade. Only the confluence of several powerful forces could have delivered China to its current position. The press should have been paying closer attention. Moreover, the real story here is in China’s growth in coal consumption–the energy source China drew upon to first match, and then surpass, the United States.

Let’s take a look first at BP’s data assessment for 2009 energy use, vs. IEA Paris. Our unit of account here is the mtoe–million tons oil equivalent. This is a unit of energy, not volume, and measures BTU. Also, a note: IEA Paris apparently is including Hong Kong in their data so I have added Hong Kong also to mainland China from the BP Statistical Review (which tracks them separately). For 2009, BP has China edging the USA by nearly 19 mtoe, and IEA Paris has China exceeding the USA by a more substantial 82 mtoe.

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