Green activists were greatly heartened last week when Premier Wen Jiabao promised that improving the mainland's energy efficiency will be a key plank of Beijing's policy platform over the next five years. To add substance to his promise Wen announced a specific target: by 2015 China will reduce the amount of energy it burns to produce each unit of economic output by 16 per cent.
The greens were cheered because China is a desperately inefficient user of energy. According to official figures, in 2009 China burned the equivalent of more than 100 tonnes of coal to produce every one million yuan of economic output. That made China around two and a half times less efficient in its energy use than the US, and six times less efficient than Germany.
As a result, China has overtaken the US to become the world's largest consumer of energy, and by far its biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, even though the Chinese economy remains less than half the size of America's.
Therefore, believe the environmentalists, Wen's pledge to improve energy efficiency is vitally important if the mainland is to restrain its overall energy use and cap the amount of greenhouse gases it pumps into the atmosphere.
This isn't the first time Beijing has embraced an energy efficiency target. In its 2006 five-year plan, the government promised to cut energy intensity - the amount of energy consumed for each unit of output - by 20 per cent.
Officials now boast that that target was 'basically met', with China's energy intensity reduced by 19.1 per cent over the five years.