China overtook the United States last year as the world’s largest energy consuming nation, according to new data released from the International Energy Agency. China’s energy consumption was half the size of the United States just 10 years ago.

Before China joined the WTO in 2001, many energy experts, including those at the IEA, predicted energy demand would grow 3 percent to 4 percent annually in the country from 2000 to 2010. Instead, China’s energy consumption has grown at roughly 13 percent a year since 2001.

According to the IEA report, China used 2,252 million tons of oil equivalent last year – 4 percent more than the 2,170 million tons consumed by the United States. Oil equivalent is a term used by the IEA to consolidate all forms of energy under one encompassing name, including coal, crude oil, natural gas, nuclear, and renewable sources like hydro, wind and solar power.

“The fact that China overtook the U.S. as the world’s largest energy consumer symbolizes the start of a new age in the history of energy,” Fatih Birol, IEA’s chief economist, told the Wall Street Journal.

The US had previously held the top spot for over a century but, despite falling to second in overall energy consumption, it retains a commanding lead as the world leader in per capita energy consumption. The average U.S. citizen uses roughly five times more energy than the average Chinese citizen. The United States also still consumes more than double the amount of oil used in China, going through an average of 19 million barrels of oil a day to China’s 9.2 million barrels per day. China, though, has continued to increase its lead as the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses since it overtook the United States in 2007, largely due to the country’s heavy use of coal.

See www.iea.org for more details.