China Becomes World's Biggest Energy Producer

China has become world's largest energy producer thanks to its expanding capacity to supply energy in the six decades since the foundation of the People's Republic, it said Friday. At a press conference by the State Council Information Office on Friday, Zhang Guobao, deputy chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission and director of the National Energy Administration, said China produced 110 times more energy in 2008 than in 1949, with a self-sufficiency rate of over 90 percent guaranteeing energy security.

In 2006, the NDRC announced it had become the world's second largest energy producer after the United States, and vowed to topple the U.S. in two years. That has now happened.

According to the NDRC, the percentage of coal in China's total energy consumption dropped from 95 percent in 1952 to 68.7 percent, and that of petroleum increased 14.6 percent. The combined proportion of hydroelectric, nuclear and wind energy went up by 11.7 percent. China produced the largest amount of hydroelectric energy and had the largest solar energy collector area in the world. China's wind energy production, which has doubled for the last three years, has become the fourth largest in the world.

When all nuclear power plants currently under construction are completed, China will take over the no. 1 spot in the world in the field as well, the NDRC predicted.