China Tops U.S. in Energy Use

By Spencer Swartz & Shai Oster

China has passed the U.S. to become the world's biggest energy consumer, according to new data from the International Energy Agency, a milestone that reflects both China's decades-long burst of economic growth and its rapidly expanding clout as an industrial giant.

China's surging appetite has transformed global energy markets and propped up prices of oil and coal in recent years, and its continued growth stands to have long-term implications for U.S. energy security.

The Paris-based IEA said China consumed 2.252 billion tons of oil equivalent last year, about 4% more than the U.S., which burned through 2.170 billion tons of oil equivalent. The oil-equivalent metric represents all forms of energy consumed, including crude oil, nuclear power, coal, natural gas and renewable sources such as hydropower.

China's economic rise has required enormous amounts of energy—especially since much of the past decade's growth was fueled not by consumer demand, as in the U.S., but from energy-intense heavy industry and infrastructure building.

China's rapidly expanding need for energy promises to have major geopolitical implications as it hunts for ways to satisfy its needs. Already, China's rising imports have changed global geopolitics. Chinese oil and coal companies have been looking overseas in their quest to secure energy supplies, pitching the Chinese flag in places like Sudan, which Western companies had largely abandoned under international pressure.

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