The Chinese government has called on the country’s biggest energy users to save 250 million tonnes of standard coal in the five years ending 2015, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a release published on Wednesday.
The 17,000 companies, which annually consume more than 10,000 tonnes of standard coal each, or above 5,000 tonnes for certain stipulated companies, accounted for more than 60 percent of total energy consumption in 2010, the commission said.
China consumed 3.25 billion tonnes of standard coal in 2010, 5.9 percent more than a year earlier, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
The world’s top energy user has pledged to cut energy intensity — the amount of energy used for each unit of gross domestic product — by 16 percent by 2015 from the level in 2010, after reducing 2010 energy intensity by nearly 20 percent from levels in 2005.
