China begins drafting energy law
26/1/2006 11:24
China has set up a taskforce to draft a law on energy, government sources
said yesterday. The taskforce, which include officials from 15 government
departments or the national legislature, is headed by Ma Kai, minister in charge
of the National Development and Reform Commission and director of the
newly-created National Energy Office. A panel of experts specialized in
energy, law, economics and public management are working for the taskforce as
advisors, sources with the commission said. Problems accumulated during the
past decades have begun to emerge in the energy sector due to increasing demand
for energy to power the country's fast-growing economy, said the
sources. "The complicated and changing international environment poses new
challenges to the country's energy and economic security," said the taskforce in
a statement. Coal remains the mainstay of China's energy supply, together
with electricity, oil, natural gas and renewable energy resources. China does
not have a basic law on energy that reflects its energy strategy and policy
orientation and regulates in general the structure of various energy products
and energy-related activities, said the statement. China is in urgent need of
formulating such a basic, comprehensive law on energy to ensure national
economic security, energy exploitation and international energy cooperation, and
streamline the energy reserve system and emergency response mechanism. Such a
law will help build China into a country that is energy efficient and
environmentally friendly through optimizing its energy structure, improving
energy efficiency and promoting clean production, and forming an economic growth
mode characterized by low input, low energy consumption, low pollution and high
efficiency. The law will also help improve work safety in energy production,
said the taskforce. A series of fatal coal mine accidents were reported in
the past year despite government's tough efforts to improve work
safety. Earlier this week, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao outlined a number of
measures to improve work safety, including more investment in work safety
facilities, in order to curb the rising trend of fatal accidents in coal mining
and other sectors. Addressing a national teleconference on work safety which
ended Tuesday, the premier said frequent fatal accidents in the coal mining
sector and other industries in recent months have resulted in heavy loss of
lives and property, which shows that the work safety situation in China is still
grave. He said the government will adopt economic policies such as compulsory
allocation of money for work safety and economic compensation for the families
of those who lose their lives or get injured when on duty. The government
will step up the reorganization of the country's coal mining sector, encouraging
large coal mining firms to merge with smaller ones as big companies usually pay
more attention to work safety. The government will increase funding for
technological upgrading to improve work safety in state-owned coal mines through
various channels, he said. The premier promised the government will try to
put work safety facilities into all state-owned coal mines within two years in a
bid to cut the incidence of major fatal coal mine gas-related explosions in
about two years.
Xinhua
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