Current status, challenges, and future sustainable development strategies for China energy

China's rapid economic growth, high-energy-intensitive industrial and product structure, coaldominated energy structure, and low-energy efficiency result in China being the second largest energy consumer as well as the second largest CO
2
emission country in the world. The Markal model, an integrated energy, environment, and economic model, was used to analyze China's energy development scenarios from 1995 through 2050 for policy study of long-term energy strategies. The results show that diversified, reliable, and environmentally sound energy development strategies should be adopted for China to solve the challenges of the increasing energy demand, the enlarging gap between the oil demand and supply, and growing concerns over local as well as global environmental issues. Coal-derived synthetic transportation fuels through coal liquefaction, hydrogen making, and advanced coal-based poly-generation technologies should be developed to solve energy security issues.