China's Energy Demands Will Level Off by Mid-Century

A new analysis is challenging widely held beliefs that China's energy demands will continue to increase sharply for the foreseeable future. Most experts believe that, at the end of the century, the country will still need more power plants, but the new analysis suggests that this is not the case.

Investigators are now saying that the country will reach a peak in energy demand by 2040 to 2050. Beyond that point, consumption levels will stabilize, and the Asian nation will no longer have to build tens of power plants every year.

The new research was conducted by experts with the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Its conclusions are challenging the widely-accepted view on the future of Chinese energy demands both in China and the US.

Data the Berkeley Lab team compiled shows that the energy plateau will be reached well before the middle of the century. Experts found that this will happen even if the country's population exceeds 1.4 billion people.

“I think this is very good news. There’s been a perception that China’s rising prosperity means runaway growth in energy consumption. Our study shows this won’t be the case,” explains scientist Mark Levine, who is the director of the Berkeley Lab China Energy Group.

The investigator is also the co-author of the new report, which is entitled “China’s Energy and Carbon Emissions Outlook to 2050.” The study was brought on by the tremendous rise in energy use that the Asian nation has been recording over the past decade or so.

Back in 2007, China overtook the United States as the world's leader in greenhouse gas emissions. Most of the carbon dioxide it releases into the atmosphere comes from power plants burning fossil fuels. Such facilities are springing up all over the place in China.

But energy demands cannot grow indefinitely, Berkeley Lab experts say. They add that energy use will stabilize once a threshold called saturation is reached. Road and rail construction efforts and energy-intensive industries will also reach this limit by 2030-2035.

“Once nearly every household owns a refrigerator, a washing machine, air conditioners and other appliances, and once housing area per capita has stabilized, per household electricity growth will slow,” Levine argues.

The research was contracted by the DOE, and a summary was presented in front of Congress. Funds for the work were provided by the China Sustainable Energy Program.

“Other studies don’t have this kind of detail. There’s no model outside of China that even comes close to having this kind of information, such as our data on housing stock and appliances,” Levine concludes.