国内英语新闻:China's energy efficiency improved in 2009: report

BEIJING, Feb.25 (Xinhua) -- China's energy consumption per 10,000 yuan (about 1464.1 U.S.dollars) of gross domestic product (GDP) dropped 2.2 percent in 2009, China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said here Thursday.

Preliminary estimates indicate that the total amount of energy consumption last year stood at 3.1 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent, up 6.3 percent compared to the 2008 level, according to a report released on the NBS website Thursday.

The report did not reveal the exact amount of energy consumed per 10,000 yuan of GDP, but the figure for 2008 was 1.10 tonnes of standard coal, according to a previous NBS report.

China's water consumption per 10,000 yuan of GDP totalled 209.3 cubic meters in 2009, down 7.6 percent from a year earlier. Water consumption per 10,000 yuan of industrial output was 116.4 cubic meters in the same period, down 8.2 percent from 2008, said the report.

The report also showed that China consumed 3.02 billion tonnes of coal, 380 million tonnes of crude oil, 88.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 3,697.3 billion kilowatt hours of electric power in 2009, up 9.2 percent, 7.1 percent, 9.1 percent and 6.2 percent year-on-year, respectively.

China has been making efforts to raise energy efficiency by eliminating high energy-consuming equipment and introducing energy-saving technologies, said the previous NBS report.

Energy consumption per 10,000 yuan of GDP was down 1.79 percent year-on-year in 2006, 4.04 percent in 2007, and 4.59 percent in 2008, according to NBS.