China is aiming to produce natural gas of around 50 million tons of coal equivalent (TCE) annually by 2020, a government guideline issued last week from the Ministry of Land and Resources and the National Energy Administration said.

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Depending upon its application, gas produces roughly 50-70% of the carbon dioxide emissions from an equivalent coal-fired plant.

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During that time, China will add the equivalent of 160 new coal plants while India adds 70.

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That lets operators experiment with different flow rates and carbon-dioxide concentrations, which can be tweaked to be anything from 3.5% to 14% (roughly equivalent to those from a coal-fired power station).

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Over the past three years, China has added 200 gigiwatts of coal-fired electric power capacity--equivalent to 20% of the entire installed capacity of the United States.

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Fitch Credit Ratings estimates that this is whittling coal sales by about 63 million tons per year, equivalent to 6% of 2010 consumption, with new EPA regulations further reducing sales by another 5%.

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Meanwhile, the energy for everything else--offices, factories, homes and data centers is 85% supplied without oil, and most of it is delivered as kilowatt-hours. (Only a vanishingly 2% of electricity is generated by oil.) Once you connect automobiles to the electric grid, you access a trillion-barrel-of-oil-equivalent energy infrastructure almost entirely fueled by domestic sources: coal, uranium, natural gas and hydro dams.

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The oil-equivalent metric represents all forms of energy consumed, including crude oil, nuclear power, coal, natural gas and renewable sources such as hydropower.

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Overall, world energy demand will grow 30% to 2030, from the equivalent of 240 million barrels of oil per day now (including oil, gas, coal, wind, etc.) to 300 million boe.

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