Deliberating on renewable and sustainable energy policies in China

In order to realize the sustainable development of country and society, many countries have established their renewable energy law and development strategy no matter developed countries or developing countries. It is well known that China is the largest developing country in the world, and the per capita GDP ranks more than 100, however, the total GDP ranks the second due to the huge population amount, and just behind USA. Certainly, the total energy consumption amount is huge, and the big energy demand has brought a serious of environmental problems such as acid rain, water and soil pollution, and resource exhaustion, etc. Fortunately, China central government has regarded the serious question to realize the sustainable development in future. The renewable energy law has been established in 2005. Firstly, China's energy situation and existing environmental questions in past years is introduced in this paper. Secondly, the distribution and the application practice of different renewable energy were introduced. Then, China's renewable energy policy is detailed introduced in the following section. The next section discusses the existing questions. Based on these discussions, the development barriers and recommendations are introduced, respectively. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.