China doled out US$21 billion of subsidies on pollution-prone fossil fuel consumption last year, hampering efforts to cut global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The subsidies increased 29 per cent from the US$16.52 billion dished out in 2009, but were lower than the US$43.9 billion in 2008, when energy prices broke records.
By segments, US$11.5 billion, or more than half of the US$21.3 billion subsidies, went to electricity, compared with US$7.77 billion to oil and US$2.01 billion to coal production and consumption.
The IEA, an inter-governmental policy adviser to 28 mostly developed nations, said in its World Energy Outlook report released just over a week ago that China's financial support to users of coal, oil, gas and electricity was the fifth-largest, after Iran's US$81 billion, Saudi Arabia's US$43.5 billion, Russia's US$39.2 billion and India's US$22.3 billion.
Support usually took the form of setting energy prices at levels below international benchmark prices.
The biggest subsidisers of energy use are either countries that are large oil and gas producers, such as Middle Eastern states, or those with a big consumer market, like populous China and India. In developed nations, where consumers can better afford international energy prices, energy subsidies are usually given to producers in the form of tax and other financial incentives.