At the provincial energy saving conference in July, Guangdong Governor Huang Huahua identified energy conservation as a top priority in the government's efforts to secure future development and build a balanced foreign-oriented economy.

HIGH ENERGY CONSUMPTION

Guangdong is pushing to make progress in energy and resource consumption. The province's water consumption decreased 0.02 tons compared with 2003 and electricity per 10,000 yuan of GDP decreased by 2.47 kilowatts. In recent years, the province established 52 cleaner production enterprises and three national ecology model areas.
However, Guangdong still faces a s-eries of energy challenges including high energy consumption and poor energy efficient systems, which have bottlenecked the province's sustainable social and economic development.

Government statistics show that the province's energy consumption per unit of GDP was 120 percent higher than the international average and was also much higher than the national average. In 2003, Guangdong's standard coal consumption per 10,000 RMB of GDP was 0.96 ton, 18 percent higher than Zhejiang province and 8 percent higher than Jiangsu province. Guangdong's electrical consumption per 10,000 RMB of GDP was 1490.76 kilowatt-hours, 14 percent higher than Zhejiang and 23 percent higher than Jiangsu. Guangdong was trading its environment and energy for high GDP growth, but at a high cost.

While Guangdong continues to strengthen its position as a major inter-national manufacturing base with automobile, petrochemical, steel, ship-building, paper and equipment manufacturing as its pillar industries, its need to become more energy efficient has become all too acute. Increasing supply and improving production efficiency is an urgent task for the province.

DECREASING DEPENDENCE ON IMPORTED RESOURCES

Guangdong, one of China's wealthiest province, is also one of the country's poorest area when it comes to energy resources. Guangdong's per capita conventional energy reserves amount to less than 1/20 of the national average and the province imports about 90 per-cent of its non-recyclable energy from other provinces and countries.

The province imports almost 100 percent of its aluminum and copper, 95 percent of its coal and wood, 72 percent of its steel, 62.5 percent of its crude oil. Too much dependence on global markets is a threat to Guangdong's economic growth. Price hike in raw materials such as fuel is an Achilles' heel to the current economic boom, which is sensitive to operating costs.
Governor Huang Huahua has id-entified several energy saving projects and plans to lower the province's dependence on imported resources in order to build a more balanced development of domestic and foreign-oriented economies and to reduce risks from international markets.
 
ENERGY SAVING MEASURES

In year 2005 and 2006, provincial leaders will focus on six areas of energy conservation including power, water, raw materials, land usage, resource allocation and recycling. In order to achieve this, lawmakers will carry out the following steps:
 1. To accelerate an energy-saving GDP growth mode as well as optimize an industrial structure that contains energy conservation methods.
2. To establish performance assessing and accounting systems for new economic modes and a recycling and energy-saving consumption mode.
3. To tackle energy-saving-related technological challenges.
4. To implement energy conservation and recycling policies.
5. To improve governmental management of energy-saving-related issues.

The GDICC 2005 theme will be "Today and Tomorrow: Guangdong's Sustainable Development". Guangdong Governor Huang Huahua, who had invited 27 advisors in March, believes that the advisors attending the forum will create feasible measures to the province's sustainable development pro-gram.

Editor: Yan