China Passes US In Energy Consumption.

From the Wall Street Journal: {Excerpt}

China Passes U.S. as World's Biggest Energy Consumer .

By SPENCER SWARTZ

China is now the world's biggest energy consumer, knocking the U.S. off a perch it held for more than a century, according to new data from the International Energy Agency.  The Paris-based agency, whose forecasts are generally regarded as bellwether indicators for the energy industry, said China devoured 2,252 million tons of oil equivalent last year, or about 4% more than the U.S., which burned through 2,170 million tons of oil equivalent. The oil-equivalent metric represents all forms of energy consumed, including crude oil, nuclear, coal, natural gas and renewable sources such as hydropower.

The figures reflect, in part, how the global recession hit the U.S. more severely than China and hurt American industrial activity and energy use. Still, China's total energy consumption has clocked annual double-digit growth rates for many years, driven by the country's big industrial base. Highlighting how quickly its energy demand has increased, China's total energy consumption was just half the size of the U.S. 10 years ago. ....

....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.....

....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.....

....Mr. Birol, previously an economist at the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, said China is expected to build over the next 15 years some 1,000 gigawatts of new power-generation capacity. That is about the total amount of electricity-generation capacity in the U.S. currently, and the construction of all those gigawatts occurred over several decades. "This demonstrates the major growth we are talking about" in energy demand and capacity growth in China, Mr. Birol said.

Comment:  "Stats" in this article are one of the reasons I am a long term energy bull.

*Long ETFs related to energy and utilities in certain client accounts.  In addition clients of my firm own largely as legacy positions shares in energy companies. 

Link:  China-Energy