Speeding up its efforts to become a greener economy, China on Monday unveiled its targets for carbon emission and energy intensity cuts in industrial production for 2011.
According to a top government official, China aims to reduce energy use and carbon emissions per unit of industrial value-added output by 4 percent this year, relative to 2010 levels.
Zhou Changyi, director of energy conservation and comprehensive utilization department with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said water use per unit of industrial value-added output will be slashed by 7 percent this year.
China's government says it successfully completed a five-year effort last year to reduce energy use per unit of output by nearly 20 percent from 2005 levels.
Meeting the energy efficiency target was seen as a key marker of China's commitment toward fighting global warming. It has surpassed the United States as the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, largely because its economic development over the past three decades has relied on labor- and energy-intensive growth.
The new cuts are part of China's wider plan to reduce both energy consumption and carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 18 percent over the next five years, said Deputy Minister Su Bo. The government pledged a 30-percent reduction in water consumption per unit of GDP over the same period, he said.
The targets are slightly higher than what China had pledged to do in its 12th Five-Year Plan released earlier this year during its annual congress. In the original plan, energy use and carbon emissions would be cut by 16 percent while water use would come down by 25 percent.
As the world's largest carbon emitter, China had pledged to reduce its carbon use per unit of economic output by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels as part of its contribution toward combating climate change. In essence, China has vowed to cut the rate at which it consumes energy, though not the overall amount of carbon it emits.
