Energy Economy in China: Policy Imperatives, Market Dynamics, and Regional Developments.

• Author: Khaleghi, Shahla

Energy Economy in China: Policy Imperatives, Market Dynamics, and Regional Developments by KANG WU, (World Scientific Publishing, 2012). ISBN 978-981-4335-67-6, Paperback, 270 pages.

China, as the world's most populous country and the largest energy consumer with rapid economic growth, faces a formidable energy challenge. 'Energy security" is one of its critical strategic goals to support Chinese economic growth. This support can come in the form of demand management policies (e.g. changing the energy consumption mix to increase the share of lowpollution energies, improving energy efficiency, and imposing pricing reform), as well as supply management policies (e.g. encouraging domestic and overseas investment and diversifying its energy trade). This book provides an in-depth analysis of such major issues related to China's energy sector, with a special focus on oil and gas, as well as a general view of the Chinese economy. Structural changes in the oil and gas system, natural gas pricing, energy security, rules and regulation for oil business, regional petroleum products and gas balance, and energy strategies and policies especially overseas oil and gas investment strategy are among the critical and interesting issues in this book.

The author of this book, Dr. Kang Wu, is an energy expert who has conducted numerous studies on various aspects of energy industries including; policy, security, supply, demand, trade, environment, energy and the economy, modeling, and market development. As a senior fellow at the East-West Center and a senior advisor at Fact Global Energy (FGE); his work focuses the Asia-Pacific region and he supervises the China Energy Project at the Center.

In the first chapter, Dr. Wu discusses the current situation and future prospect of primary energy production (PEP) and consumption (PEC) mix as well as providing a review of economic development and energy intensity in China. His review shows that China was the largest consumer of primary energy in 2010 and its per-capita PEC, 14.5 Barrel Oil Equivalent (boe)/person, has been slightly higher than the world's average, 14 boe/person. Coal has played a dominant role in China's PEP and PEC and in spite of its gradual declining share in PEC mix, its importance will remain much the same in the future. China will still be a net importer of oil and gas in the next decades, although the policy of substituting renewable energy for fossil energies will be followed to reduce carbon emission intensity.

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