He stressed that the government should take the major responsibility in investing in rural energy development, especially in public infrastructure construction.

Experts and officials attending the conference also agreed that power supply services such as oil and gas stations and maintenance services for facilities of new and renewable energies needed to be upgraded in rural areas.

Otherwise, they said, rural residents would be discouraged from using cleaner energies due to lack of access or lack of expertise.

They were also encouraging data about the improvement in rural energy use disclosed by experts at the conference when they tried to fix problems there.

The Chinese government has arranged a total investment up to nearly 2.6 billion yuan in rural energy development via the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) between 2001 and 2006, said Kou Jianping, director of the energy and ecology division of the MOA.

China had built 21.75 million household biogas facilities by the end of 2006, amid efforts to promote clean energy use and improve energy efficiency in the countryside, according to Kou.

These household facilities could produce 8.5 billion cubic meters of biogas annually, equivalent to saving about 13.3 million tons of standard coal or preserving 4.5 million hectares of woodland.

Kou said the country is actively promoting straw as solid and gas energy as well as power generation with straw to make better use of existing energy resources in rural areas.

There were nearly 200,000 people working for the rural energy system in China by the end of 2005, with 170,000 being licensed farmer-technicians maintaining facilities, according to Kou.