BEIJING (AP) -- China may not meet an energy efficiency target set for this year because its efforts to revive its economy in the wake of a global slump have set back several years of progress on reducing its energy usage, a senior Chinese official said Thursday.
The economic giant is focused on clean energy innovation, such as producing alternative-fuel cars, to reduce its greenhouse emissions, but a booming economy has made China's goal of cutting its energy intensity by 20 percent over a five-year period that ends this year uncertain, said Vice Minister of Science and Technology Zhang Laiwu.
"We still have a lot of challenges to meet. We should not be too optimistic about that. Our task remains arduous," Zhang told a news conference.
The government plan suffered a setback this year as China sought to jump-start its stalling economy with a stimulus that focused heavily on upgrading infrastructure, sparking a construction boom that boosted demand for steel, cement and other energy-intensive products. China had cut energy intensity by 14.4 percent in 2009, but the country's economic rebound pushed energy intensity back up by 0.09 percent in the first half of this year, the first such increase since 2006.
China has surpassed the United States as the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases. The countries account for 40 percent of the total global emissions, which have been blamed for climate change.
But Beijing has made key strides in many areas of clean technology, including solar, wind, and alternative fuels, but much of country's difficulty lies in the fact its economic development over the past three decades has relied on labor-intensive and energy-intensive growth, Zhang said.
"We had a resource-intensive growth pattern with very low labor costs. ... The essential issue for us is whether or not we are able to move from low-end to high-end, and change from a resource-based economy to science and technology-based and knowledge-based economy," he said.
In the past five years, China has spent 10 billion yuan ($1.47 billion) on research and development for energy conservation and emission reduction projects, Zhang said.
Its work in green technology has resulted in new advances, including its first solar thermal power plant, the world's first coal-fired power plant carbon capture project, and new-energy vehicles that include hybrid and all-electric models.
China is hoping those emerging clean energy industries will serve as both a way to reduce the nation's surging need for imported oil and gas and as a promising source of economic growth and jobs.
Under a pilot program, the government is providing subsidies in 25 Chinese cities for vehicle purchases in the public and private sector, Zhang said. More than 5,000 vehicles have been bought, with subsidies of 970 million yuan ($142 million), and are on the road.
Zhang brushed off recent concerns raised by an American union that filed a formal complaint accusing China of violating free-trade commitments by providing illegal subsidies to Chinese producers of wind and solar equipment. The U.S. government has 45 days to decide whether to launch an investigation that could lead to cases being filed against China before the WTO.
"After China acceded to the (World Trade Organization), every decision it makes should be in line with WTO rules and there's no exception in this case," Zhang said.
