Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
climate change, and also exhibit China's determination and action to keep its word
on its international commitment and national economic development goal via low
carbon development.
1.3.2 China's Targets for Energy Saving and Emission Reduction
During the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-2010), for the first time, China set up
restrictive targets for energy saving, that is, “a 20 % reduction in energy/GDP”.
Moreover, it decomposed that goal layer by layer, with target responsibility letters
signed; it distributed the national target into specific regions, industries, and even
key companies, and took strict examination measures to achieve the targets.
The reason that China has been taking such strict measures to have the target
realized is that China wants to speed the transformation of its development mode by
making and enacting energy saving targets. The traditional pattern of development
has features of “high input, high consumption, and high emissions”. The low cost
competition mode, which underestimates the factor value of land, water, resources,
energy, and the environment, resulted in huge successes in development in the past
30 years, but also created unsustainable problems. Hence, as early as the 9th Five
Year Plan (1996-2000), the Central Committee of CCP upheld the slogan of
transforming the mode of economic growth. However, in the existing institutional
arrangements, especially with the price twists of resources and sharp competition
among local governments, it has been impossible to go far in transforming the
mode. This was particularly true during the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-2005) as
China ushered in a new wave of quick development: heavy industries, steel,
metallurgy, and petrochemical industries with high energy consumption were
developed in leaps and bounds across the country. Energy/GDP turned from the
declining curve of the past into a climbing line. The environmental pressures
confronting China jumped dramatically at the same time. Therefore, during the
11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010) there had to be policies driving different regions,
sectors, and industries to take feasible specific actions to reverse the environmental
and ecological deterioration and increasing environmental pressure of resources,
and to promote a fundamental transformation of the development mode. In the 11th
Plan, the restrictive target of a “20 % reduction of energy/GDP” came into being in
the above context.
1.3.3 China's Actions of Energy Saving and Emission Reduction
In the past 5 years (2006-2010), focusing on the 20 % target, governments at
different levels, different sectors, major industries and companies all adopted a
series of relevant policies and measures, like “responsibility contract for energy
saving and emission reduction”, “promoting the large and holding the small”, “Top-
1000 Energy-Consuming Enterprises Program”, etc., resulting in good perfor-
mance. During the 11th Five-Year Plan, China's energy/GDP declined by
19.1 %, reaching the basic requirement of the plan. However, measures targeting
