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Beijing, Apr 28 (ANI): The increasing energy demands in China will stabilize between the year 2030 and 2035, according to a study.

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said the energy use would level off, even as its population edges past the 1.4 billion mark.

China’s steeply rising curve of energy demand curve would begin to moderate between 2030 and 2035 and flatten thereafter, they said.

There will come a time within the next two decades, when the number of people in China acquiring cars, larger homes, and other accouterments of industrialized societies will peak. It’s a phenomenon known as saturation, explained Mark Levine, the co-author of the Berkeley Lab report.

The report also anticipates the widespread use of electric cars, a significant drop in reliance on coal for electricity generation, and a big expansion in the use of nuclear power, will help to drive down China’s CO2 emissions.

The report also makes predictions about adoption of improvements in the energy efficiency of such equipments, just as Americans are now buying more efficient washing machines, cars with better gas-mileage, and less power-hungry light bulbs.

Report also suggests China will reach saturation in road and rail construction before the 2030-2035 time frame, resulting in very large decreases in iron and steel demand. Additionally, other energy-intensive industries will see demand for their products flatten.

Berkeley Lab researchers Nan Zhou, David Fridley, Michael McNeil, Nina Zheng, and Jing Ke co-authored the report with Levine.

Their study is a “scenario analysis” that forecasts two possible energy futures for China.

One an “accelerated improvement scenario” that assumes success for a very aggressive effort to improve energy efficiency, the other a more conservative “continued improvement scenario” that meets less ambitious targets.

Yet both of these scenarios, at a different pace, show similar moderation effects and a flattening of energy consumption well before 2050. (ANI)