Smart progress made on the green front

China will continue its drive toward energy conservation, emissions reduction, and environmental protection in 2009, Premier Wen Jiabao said yesterday.

In the past three years China's energy consumption per unit of GDP has dropped by 10.08 percent, Wen told lawmakers in a report to the annual session of the National People's Congress.

China's energy consumption per unit of GDP dropped by 4.59 percent in 2008 from a year earlier. Last year the country reported reduction in both chemical oxygen demand (COD), a main index of water pollution, and the total emission of sulfur dioxide, a main air pollutant, by 4.42 percent and 5.95 percent respectively from the previous year.