Now, Julian Wong from the Center for American Progress points us to an analysis that he published on his blog showing substantially similar figures using another set of data. With that data the analysis concludes that:
[China's] energy intensity drop for the three year period 2006-2008 is only 7.7%, not the 10% commonly reported.Before pointing us to the guest post Julian tells us in the comments that;
China’s goal is to reduce energy intensity (energy consumption per unit of GDP) by 20% of 2005 levels by 2010. According to its own reports, China has made steady progress in achieving that (it is now at -13.4% of 2005 levels), but because GDP has continued to grow by 8 to 10% over the last few years, absolute emissions have increased.. . the main implication of my point is that while China has done a lot, it will need to do more going forward.I responded by encouraging Julian to share the broader context of China's "fuzzy math" with his readers over at CAP, it seems like an important part of the story that is too often left out of CAP analyses.