BEIJING, Dec 13 (Reuters) - China has claimed progress in efforts to consume energy more efficiently, saying a key measure of energy intensity fell in the first nine months of the year, Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.
China's energy consumption per unit of GDP dropped 3.46 percent in the year to September, Xinhua said, citing the country's top planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
"It marks new progress the nation has made in energy saving," the agency quoted NDRC chief Zhang Ping as saying.
Decades of rapid economic growth have seen China's energy demand soar.
China is set to dislodge the United States as the world's top energy consumer soon after 2010, the International Energy Agency forecast last year, as offices and factories mushroom, and its huge population buys more cars and electrical appliances.
Scrambling to secure energy supplies to power its economy, while trying to curb its chronic air and water pollution, China's government has set a 2010 target of reducing energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent.
But the country faces an uphill battle to meet the target over the next two years, with energy intensity dropping 3.66 percent last year, and only 1.79 percent in 2006, Xinhua said.
The report comes as representatives from some 190 countries meet in Poland to push talks aimed at clinching agreement on a new climate pact by the end of next year, to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.
Pressure is mounting on Beijing to commit to more concrete targets on energy consumption and emissions to combat climate change, but Chinese officials warn that lifting hundreds of millions out of relative poverty will stay top of the country's agenda.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last month said rich nations must abandon their "unsustainable lifestyle" to fight climate change and help poor countries that will suffer the most from worsening droughts and rising seas. (Reporting by Ian Ransom; Editing by Lincoln Feast)