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

Jiang made the remarks at a forum held by the energy research institute of the State Grid Corporation of China.

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

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 GDP would be reduced by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels, Jiang said.

Thus, primary energy consumption must be kept to below 4.2 billion tonnes in the next five-year plan (2011-2015) period to achieve the two targets, Jiang said.

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

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

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

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