Collier: China is concerned about energy conservation, but climate change does not seem to be so high a priority. Why is that?

Zhou: To some extent, climate change issues are a new thing for developing countries. The first group of scientists that raised the climate change issue were from the developed countries. [Today] Chinese leaders know that climate change is not just a scientific issue, but an economic, environmental, political, and diplomatic issue.

China's main energy conservation goal is to decrease energy intensity—the amount of energy used per unit of economic production—by 20 percent in the five years from 2006 to 2010. But so far, it has failed to meet the annual 4 percent benchmark. How will you reach your target?

The targets have already been allocated to each of the provinces and almost all of the enterprises that consume a significant amount of energy. For every official, they have their own targets for energy conservation improvements, so it's a big issue for their promotions in the future.

Many foreigners have said to China, "please don't make the same mistakes in development that we have."

Naturally. We will learn the experience and lessons from abroad. For example, we cannot have one house-one family in China. We need it to be more compacted, with apartment buildings and more density, especially in cities, and we need to develop more public transportation, instead of mass transportation by private cars. We need good land planning, so we will not make people move too far for work, and we need fuel-efficient cars, not some fancy SUV all the time.

In China, about 70 percent of energy is consumed by industry and construction sectors. This is quite different from the United States, where manufacturing uses less than 30 percent. In China, infrastructure construction is at high speed, a little more than $2 trillion per year. More than 2 billion square meters of new buildings will be built each year. How to design and allocate land planning is very important.

There seems to be little progress in the international negotiations process for a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, and the United States and Europe are demanding that China and other developing nations agree to binding emissions caps. What can be done to solve this impasse?

Developed countries need to take the lead. We understand that we cannot copy what happened in your country. We have 1.3 billion people, and if we consume the same, there's not enough energy for us and for the world. If China is asked to do more, we will need additional help, including technical or financial support.

You mentioned in an earlier speech to this conference that monitoring and verification are very important. Why?

For the local governments, you have to check if their total management is good, if they have improved their efficiency, or if it's only paperwork. We don't need paper successes, we need real successes.

If I were a Chinese official, and I were going to be judged on my promotion based on my energy performance, maybe I would have a big interest in fudging my numbers.

That's why the central government's National Bureau of Statistics will give guidance on how the data can be processed. If you give fake data, you are illegal. And we are developing approaches to check the numbers.

One of the proposals that both the U.S. Congress and Europe are talking about is having some sort of green tariff system. It's a way of putting pressure on China and other developing nations. In China, what would be the effect if foreign nations adopted some sort of carbon tariff?

From the official point of view, we don't think that international standards like a carbon tariff at the same time is fair or good policy. I doubt it would be agreed to by all the countries.

For many years, you have been one of the Chinese government's chief champions of energy efficiency. Has it been difficult for you?

Efficiency is something [with which] you can help the people, help China to develop better. So then my work is recognized. I think it's a good job.
In China, just like in the United States, there are powerful industries that do not want anybody telling them that they must emit less. I think you need social consensus [and] to provide a scientific basis for the policy maker. For example, for power generators, we allow higher prices and higher rebates for the power plants if they use the [smokestack emissions] scrubbers. And of course we need to educate the entrepreneurs themselves, to say they need to take social responsibility.

Has it been difficult to convince officials who simply follow the mantra of “build, expand, grow, grow”?

We are not a lobbying system, we are scientists. Our job is to use data to say something. We have to analyze all technologies-what are their costs and performance, what is the best way for optimization, what will lower the cost of development, what is the externality of environmental pollution or resources consumption-and give the government the whole story, from scientific study to economic analysis. Then the decision makers can really think about that.