GUANGZHOU: South China's Guangdong Province, one of the country's biggest energy consumers, is seeking help from foreign governments and organizations to curb its appetite for resources, an official said yesterday.

Xie Shichao, director of the Guangdong provincial economic and trade commission's department of environment and resource conservation, told a press conference yesterday that representatives of the governments of the US, UK and Switzerland and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, as well as the Asian Development Bank and some private companies were interested in cooperating with Guangdong to develop energy-saving projects.

Guangdong signed an agreement with the Swiss engineering firm ABB to help local companies become more efficient. ABB will also help analyze and audit local companies' energy-use.

Meanwhile, Guangdong and the British Consulate General in Guangzhou jointly organized a Sino-British Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) seminar in the first half of the year.

Both sides said they wanted to promote more projects under the CDM.

"Guangdong's energy-saving industry has strong potential to grow in the coming years," Xie said.

Guangdong lacks sources of energy and other natural resources and so must invest more in energy-saving technology if it is to continue its rapid economic growth, Xie said.

He said making the province more efficient is a long-term goal, adding that Guangdong would shut some large companies that use a lot of resources but generate few economic benefits later this year.

Guangdong used 154 billion kWh in the first six months this year, up 13.4 percent from the same period last year, according to statistics from Xie's commission,

Of that, industry used 111 billion kWh, a year-on-year increase of 15 percent.

The province also used more than 10 million tons of oil from January to June, up 11.2 percent year-on-year.

Guangdong purchased more than 50.7 million tons of coal from around the world in the first five months, up 9.9 percent from the same period of last year.

(China Daily 08/03/2007 page5)