China's energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 0.8 percent in the first half of the year, despite ambitious efforts to improve efficiency, state press said Tuesday.
"The situation is not promising for regions and major industries to cut their energy consumption," Xinhua news agency quoted an official with the National Bureau of Statistics as saying.
"It will be a very challenging task for them to attain this year's goal."
China set a four percent cut in its energy consumption per unit of GDP this year, as part of efforts to raise energy efficiency and reduce the ratio by 20 percent by 2010, it said.
The increased energy consumption is mainly a result of poor performance in some energy-intensive industries, like mining, electricity production and heavy industry, the statistics bureau said.
China's economy has more than quadrupled in size over the last 25 years, largely due to huge investment and rapidly rising energy use.
However, Chinese officials are increasingly acknowledging that the conflict between environment protection and booming economic growth is challenging China's future development
While the per capita use of water, mineral resources and energy resources in China is about 32 percent, 47 percent and 39 percent, the world average respectively, its energy consumption per 10,000 dollars of output value is 3.4 times the world average, the leading People's Daily said earlier this year.
China's volume of carbon dioxide discharge per unit of GDP is about 68 times that of Japan, 26 times of Germany, and six times of the United States, it said.
According to a report released last year by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China ranks 54 out of 59 nations as the world's most wasteful users of natural resources.
