China, powered by years of surging economic growth, is now the world's largest energy consumer, bumping the United States from the top spot for the first time in more than a century, according to new data from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
China consumed 2.25 billion tons of oil equivalent last year, or about 4% more than the United States, which burned through 2.17 billion tons of oil equivalent. China's total energy consumption was just half that of the United States a decade ago.
"The fact that China overtook the U.S. as the world's largest energy consumer symbolizes the start of a new age in the history of energy," IEA chief economist Fatih Birol told The Wall Street Journal. The United States had been the world's biggest overall energy consumer since the early 1900s, he said.
China was expected to become the biggest energy consumer in 2015, but the economic meltdown and green energy programs in the United States accelerated the transition, Birol said.