CHAPTER 1 GENERAL PROVISIONS

Article 1 This law is formulated in order to promote energy conservation throughout society, improve the efficiency of energy utilization, achieve economic benefits, protect the environment, secure national economic and social development, and meet the requirement everyday life of people.

Article 2 The term energy used in this Law refers to various resources including coal, crude oil, natural gas, power, coke, coal gas, heat, oil products, liquid petroleum gas, biomass, and other resources from which useful energy can be derived directly or through processing and conversion.

Article 3 The term energy conservation used in this Law means: enhancing energy use management; adopting measures which are technologically feasible, economically rational, and environmentally and socially acceptable; reducing loss and waste in the chain of energy production and consumption, all to achieve the efficient and rational use of energy.

Article 4 Energy conservation is a long term strategy for national economic development.

The State Council and the governments of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government should: strengthen their efforts in energy conservation; restructure industry, enterprises, products, and energy consumption patterns; promote technological progress for energy conservation; reduce energy consumption per unit of economic output and energy consumption per physical unit of product; improve the exploitation, processing, conversion, transmission, and distribution of energy; and encourage the national economy to develop in an energy-efficient manner.