China's primary energy consumption will be kept to between 4 billion and 4.2 billion tons of standard coal by 2015, Jiang Bing, director of the development and planning department of the National Energy Administration, said on Saturday.

Primary energy refers to existing natural energy which does not need processing, such as fossil fuels, nuclear fuels, biomass energy, hydropower, wind power and solar power.

As China has adopted a low-carbon development strategy, the country plans to raise the non-fossil energies ratio in its total primary energy consumption to 15 percent by 2020, and carbon dioxide emissions per gross domestic product would be cut by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels, Jiang said at a forum held by the energy research institute of the State Grid Corp of China.

The primary energy consumption must be kept to below 4.2 billion tons in the next Five-Year Plan period through 2015 to achieve the two targets, he said.

China's per capita energy consumption now stands at 2.5 tons of standard coal a year and, if left uncontrolled, the country might see its energy consumption top 7 billion tons of standard coal in 2030, Jiang said.

However, he said that despite the huge total amounts, the per capita energy consumption would only be equivalent to current levels in Japan.

China's economic growth mode transformation is quite necessary and it would be a strategic choice for it to control its total energy consumption over the next 15 years, Jiang said.

China's primary energy consumption topped 3.07 billion tons of standard coal in 2009, up 30 percent from 2005, according to the NEA.