CRI听力:China's coal use may have peaked in 2013-2014

The peak year for coal consumption in China will be 2020 -- that's what most analysts believed.

But according to a jointly-authored paper by economists from both China and the UK, published in the Nature Geoscience journal, Professor Qi Ye from China and Professor Nicholas Stern from the UK have a different opinion.

In their paper, they say China's coal consumption may have peaked in 2013-2014.

Professor Qi Ye with Tsinghua University explains the study.

"2013, coal consumption [in China] reached 4.3 billion tons, and 2014, coal consumption decreased by 2.9 percent, and 2015, there is additional 3.5 percent decrease in coal consumption."

Co-author Nicholas Stern is a world renowned economist and president of the British Academy.

He believes, as the world's second-largest economy has stepped up efforts to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions in recent years, the downward trend has continued.

"I think it's a permanent trend. I think China's coal consumption has peaked. It will be perhaps fairly flat for a little while, but I think it's on the way down. I do think that this is real because there are some very strong underlying reasons for this. Growth and structure, because China's economy is slowing down a little bit, and its structure is changing away from energy-intensive industries. And you have the policy reasons around air pollution, climate change and efficiency. All these, I think, are long lasting reasons and that's why I think this phenomenon is real."

According to the paper, one of the most important forces driving this trend is China's ongoing economic slowdown, especially in the construction and manufacturing industries.

But will the nation's coal consumption increase again if its economic growth rebounds?

Professor Qi Ye dismisses these concerns.

"It's quite unlikely that the economy will once again stimulate a major significant increase in coal consumption. So basically, we say, the growth rate, economic growth, no longer depends on the growth of coal consumption. This is a structural change and this is a direction in terms of the overall economic growth."

Meanwhile, Stern said the peaking of coal burning in China represents a turning point, not only for the country, but also for the global efforts to combat climate change.

"It's a very important turning point. Because it has a very large economy and because it has been performing well and because it has a large number of people, China is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. So when China's emissions look as if they are going to peak sometime in the next 10 years or so, that's very important for the world. And China is showing the world how it can have economic growth whilst moving towards a decline in its emissions. Not quite declining yet, but I think in my view, within 10 years China's emissions will start to decline."

Despite being the world's largest growth market for 15 years in a row, Chinese energy consumption only grew 1.5 percent in 2015 year on year, the lowest growth in 17 years.

To cut carbon emissions and control air pollution, China has been trying to change its energy mix and increase the use of non-fossil fuels such as solar, wind, hydropower and nuclear energy.

According to a national plan released in 2014, the share of non-fossil fuels in the primary energy mix will rise to 15 percent by 2020. For CRI, I'm Min Rui.