Powering ahead

Buried deep in the statistical communique on energy conservation issued on Tuesday is a little surprise that China has managed to reach the annual target of reducing energy intensity by at least 4 percent for, not one, but two years.

Now, the country can be more confident about cutting energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent during the five-year plan from 2006 to 2010.

When previous statistics showed that the amount of energy used to generate each dollar of national income fell by only 1.79 percent in 2006 and 3.66 percent in 2007, a rough calculation showed that even the 4.59 percent cut in 2008 looked insufficient to put China back on the track towards its five-year energy-efficiency target.