Page 359 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

332 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

demand driven by China’s economic growth. Furthermore, taking China’s
neighbor, India, into consideration with its population of 1 billion, it will add
double pressures on the demand for the same resources.
After a short period of self-sufficiency in energy supply, especially in coal
and petroleum, China became a net importer of petroleum in 1993, and it took
only a few years before China became the second largest oil importer and
consumer after the United States in 2009 (USDOE, 2011). China’s energy
profile used to be heavily weighted toward fossil fuel technologies (petroleum
and coal) at a time when reductions are urgently needed to stabilize global
climate change. Based on the 2008 statistics from the International Energy
Agency, the growth rate of China’s energy consumption and its share of the
global total final consumption are comparably much higher than the rest of the
world (Fig. 17.1).
It is foreseeable that China’s resource imports of oil and gas will continue to
increase if its targeted economic growth is to be maintained and it does not
move fast enough into 3IR. The implication is therefore clear that not only
global commodity price and international geopolitical power relations will be
affected but also China’s international politics, such as its foreign policy
rationale, international aid objective, arms sale consideration, and compulsory
expansion of its long-range naval power projection capabilities, will be closely
connected energy economic issues. The rise of China, as a key actor in energy
consumption, is forcing the current international energy regime to adjust or
modify its established rules of the capital market game. This is because the
international energy regime “is influenced not only by economic, political, and
social factors of resource-rich countries but also by international political
factors, particularly change in the international balance of power, adjustment of
relationships among countries and changes to international rules” (Xu, 2007,
p. 6). However, events in North Africa and the Middle East in early 2011 may
have changed all this. Clearly the price of fossil fuels will rise and remain high.
One of the key challenging questions raised here is whether the global
ecological system is on the verge of reaching the limit and whether the

FIGURE 17.1 Shares of total final consumption in 1973 and 2006. Courtesy International
Energy Agency, 2008. Key World Energy Statistics, p. 30.