China's per unit GDP energy consumption fell 1.23 percent in 2006, missing the projected target, official figures released Wednesday show.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said energy consumption per 10,000 yuan (1,292 U.S. dollars) of gross domestic product (GDP) amounted to 1.21 tons of coal equivalent in the year.

The Chinese government set a goal of reducing energy consumption per unit GDP by 20 percent in the five-year period from 2006 to 2010. The goal for 2006 was four percent.

This is the first time for China to see an annual decline in its energy consumption per unit GDP since 2003, despite a 0.8 percent rise in the index in the first half of last year.

According to preliminary estimates by the NBS, China consumed a total of 2.46 billion tons of coal equivalent in 2006, up 9.3 percent from a year earlier. The growth is 1.4 percentage points lower than China's GDP growth of 10.7 percent in the year.

China's energy consumption soared 15.3 percent in 2003 and 16.1 percent in 2004, both of which were over five percentage points higher than the GDP growth of the corresponding years.

Energy consumption dropped to 10.6 percent in 2005, still higher than the year's GDP growth.

Zhou Dadi, researcher with the the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said the decline shows that China's efforts in cooling its economy and reducing energy consumption have begun to take effect.

However, failure to meet the annual goal of the government shows that the Chinese economy is still growing in a way that relies too much on energy and resource consumption, said Zhou.

China saw an increase in its total energy consumption in 2006. The consumption included 2.37 billion tons of coal, up 9.6 percent year on year; 320 million tons of crude oil, up 7.1 percent; 55.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas, up 19.9 percent; 416.7 billion kilowatt-hours of hydropower, up 5 percent; and 54.3 billion kilowatt-hours of nuclear power, up 2.4 percent.

The 9.6 percent rise of coal consumption shows that China's economic growth still relies too much on coal, which is comparatively dirty and inefficient, said Zhou.

Han Yongwen, secretary-general of the NDRC, said earlier during an on-line interview that it would be a time-consuming and step-by-step process for China to improve its industrial structure and change the economic growth mode.

Last year, all the provincial governments set their targets of reducing energy consumption in the 11th five-year period.

The NDRC announced in January this year that China would close small coal-fired power units with total annual capacity of 50 million kilowatts over the next four years, in a move to reduce the country's energy consumption by four percent.

Xie Fuzhan, director of the NBS, predicted earlier this year that as fiscal, tax and price policies came into effect and the industrial restructuring sped up, China would see greater reduction in energy consumption in the coming years.

Source: Xinhua