China's contribution to reducing global carbon emissions has been praised by the Worldwatch Institute, an influential environmental group in the United States.
This year was the third consecutive year that China's annual consumption of coal declined, representing a 25 per cent reduction in consumption compared to the record high in 1996, it said.
'This meant that the United States, not China, is now the world's largest coal consumer for the first time in 15 years,' Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute, wrote in an article devoted to the recent international negotiations in the Hague on the Kyoto Protocol designed to curb greenhouse gases. China was identified as certain to be the largest contributor to increased global carbon emissions.
Coal contributes 40 per cent to the climate-altering carbon dioxide gas that enters the atmosphere and China relies on coal for 75 per cent of its energy needs.
China had long been viewed as the most intractable element in the global energy equation, Mr Flavin wrote in the institute's journal.
China plans to cut its dependency on coal to just 50 per cent of its needs in the next two decades. This week it unveiled plans to boost reliance on sustainable energy at a conference and trade fair devoted to renewable energy.