China, India are key users of energy

LONDON – China and India must ramp up efforts to curb oil demand and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid devastating consequences for the world’s energy supply, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday.

The IEA said China and India will account for around 45 percent of the increase in global primary energy demand through 2030, when the world’s energy needs are expected to be well over 50 percent higher than they are today.

The agency added that the two emerging economies’ growing appetite for crude oil imports, predicted to quadruple by 2030, could create a “supply” crunch as early as 2015.

“How China and India respond to the rising threats to their energy security will also affect the rest of the world,” the Paris-based agency said in its 2007 World Energy Outlook, released just a month before some 200 countries meet in Bali, Indonesia, to begin a new round of talks seeking a global deal on climate change policies.

The agency said global carbon emissions would rise by 57 percent by 2030 on current trends, giving a global temperature increase of 5 to 6 degrees Celsius.

China is due to overtake the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide this year – that’s three years earlier than the agency had forecast in its annual report last year – while India will become the third-biggest emitter around 2015, according to IEA estimates.