On July 3, the national government published data of coal and electricity consumption for every mainland province except Tibet, saying Guangdong was the most economic, using 0.79 tons of standard coal in 2005 for every 10,000 RMB of GDP while the national average was 1.22 tons. This is an honor Guangdong has been thirsting for because the province has been making efforts during the past 14 years to cut its energy consumption by 3.62 percent every year.

In the first six months this year, Guangdong further improved its energy efficiency as the standard coal used to turn out 10,000 RMB of GDP dropped by 2.7 percentage point. And in May, the electricity consumed per GDP growth unit also went down by 2 percent, and the growth of total energy consumption of the province was 2.8 percent lower than the pace of its industrial output. The largest energy consumers, in-cluding Shaoguan Steel, Guang-dong Petrochemical and Mao-ming Petrochemical, saw their energy consumption decrease by 14.5, 11.1 and 13.6 percentage points respectively.

Deputy Director of Guangdong Statistics Bureau Xin Xiaowei, contributes the province's pro-gress to five factors:
 
1) In recent years, Guangdong has been actively developing resource-friendly industries, such as pharmaceuticals, the service industries, IT and electronic industries and machinery manufactures.
The size of industries that consumed large quantities of energy and power, such as metallurgy, building materials, ceramics, printing, paper making, thermal power generating, petrochemical, were kept under control.

2) 18.5 percent of Guangdong's power supply in 2005 was purchased from other provinces. About 30 percent was hydro power, wind power and nuclear power, which are more resource-friendly than thermal power.

3) Compared with other provinces, Guangdong has more foreign-funded enterprises, which have more advanced energy saving methods and equipment.

4) Guangdong lacks natural resources so local governments, industries and residents are willing to join the energy-saving campaign.

5) According to the concept of "scale economy", the cost of producing a product will decrease when the product-ion scale of the industry or enterprise expand.

ENERGY-SAVING GOALS

Earlier this year, China's 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010) called for overall consumption of energy per unit of GDP to be cut by 20 percent in five years. All the provinces and industries were required to take part in this drive and energy consumption became a comp-ulsory index for local officials' career assessment.
Guangdong officials took these energy saving goals seriously. Since Guangdong's consumption per GDP unit was already 35.2 percent lower than the national average, the province set a reachable goal to cut the index by 13 percent in the coming five years.

Setting a goal 7 percent lower than the national average does not mean Guangdong is going to slow down its energy saving efforts. The province knows clearly that there is still much room for improvement. Guangdong, which occupies 1.87 percent of China's territory, produces five percent of ind-ustrial emissions and 11 percent of the country's industrial sewage. Acid rain, caused by industrial emissions, covers 70 percent of the province's territory and accounts for over half of the region's total rain. And even with the national title as most energy efficient, Guangdong's current energy consumption per unit of GDP is 2.2 times higher than the world average, and 2.3 times, 6.2times and 3.2 times higherhan the correspondent figures of US, Japan and UK respectively.

GREENER GROWTH MODE

In its eleventh five-year plan (2006-2010), Guangdong pointed out that the way to improve its energy efficiency is to expand its energy-saving and environmental-friendly industries and to develop a recycling economy.
To enhance local officials' awareness of energy saving issues, the provincial government plans to publish figures for its 21 cities' energy and power consumption per unit of GDP every six months. Energy efficiency is to be included into the assessment of the cities' development. Meanwhile, Guangdong will make strides in six areas:

1) Guangdong will develop an overall recycling economy that protects the environment and saves energy, water and land.

2) The government will promote recycling throughout the province by setting energy consumption standards for various industries.

3) Launch several recycling pilot projects.
 4) Energy and power-saving projects for certain industries and business sectors.

5) The government will provide full support to all energy saving efforts.

6) Forums will be organized to promote the "building an energy-saving society" concept to the public.

City-level governments have already responded positively to the provincial government's call. For example, Shen-zhen recently issued two other local ordinances concerning energy saving and environmental protection. The new rules encompassed both more severe punishment for violation of environ-ment-related stipulations and more detailed requirements for the constr-uction of energy-saving buildings.

The progress in green legislation demonstrates Guangdong's resolve to reform its economy into a greener and more efficient one. As China mobilizes to cut energy consumption, Guangdong is ready to spearhead this new direction. If it can succeed in this transformation towards a "greener" economy, the prov-ince will surely be in a position for a competitive future competition. 

Editor: Yan