China's energy sources industry faces serious problems

Energy sources industry is a corner stone for national economy. Price and supply of energy sources have great influences on every walk of life. Also steelmaking is tied umbilically to energy sources and consumes large amount of energy sources. Today, due to rapid development of the economy, energy sources' supply fails to meet the huge demand in China. There is a big gap between the supply and demand of energy sources, including oil especially. Furthermore, there are some other problems that restrict the development of energy sources industry: 1. Oil supply issues China has been a net oil importer for several years. Domestic oil supply cannot meet the demand. Therefore, it has to import oil. According to the sum of detected oil reserves and the present capacity of local oil fields, the yearly output of crude oil may be around 180-200 million tons in the forthcoming years. But the current oil consumption is nearly 300 million tons per year and the figure will rise to 500 million tons in 2020. Someone can confidently say that China's 60 percent or 300 million tons of total oil consumption will be supplied with imports in 2020. This is a dangerous dependence rate because big fluctuations on global oil market, which may occur due to paroxysmal problems, may cause serious damages, even disaster to China's economy. Balancing utilization of energy sources Undoubtedly, coal is the number one energy source in China. China lacks oil and natural gas resources but it is rich in coal resources. Therefore, energy supply mainly depends on coal. Among all reserves of normal energy sources in China, coal accounts for 92 percent, while oil and gas account for 2.9 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively. But coal is not a clean energy source, and pollutes the environment. Though state has been taking measures to encourage the developments of other energy sources, even including nuclear and recycled energy, it is still difficult to lower the consumption rate of coal. Coal consumption is estimated to continue accounting for more than 50 percent of China's total consumption of energy sources by 2050. Efficiency and pollution China's huge demand for energy is partly caused by the inefficient usage of energy sources. At present, usage efficiency of energy sources is only 34 percent, lagging behind the developed countries by 10 percent. As a result, China's industries need to consume 200-300 million tons of additional standard coal every year which is equal to 20 percent of total energy sources' consumption. Due to low-level mining and burning of energy sources, environmental destruction and pollution problems are becoming more and more serious. According to recent data, 60 percent of 40 monitored cities are polluted in different degrees; 30 percent of the lands are corrupted by acid rain; 30 percent of water resources are polluted seriously; and nearly 2.8 million square kilometers, or 30% of China's territory, have transformed into desert already, and it is still expanding. Due to the afore-mentioned problems, China's energy sources industry is in crisis now, and crisis require harsh measures. Therefore, Chinese government will probably take some strict measures to give a healthy route to energy sources industry. Enterprises should also take more social responsibilities to protect our earth and maintain a healthy economic development.