The Marginal Revolution blog passes on information reported in the 11 April issue of Business Week that China is one of the least energy efficient countries in the world.

Political economist Wenran Jiang estimates that China spends three times the world average on energy to produce $1 of gross domestic product, and seven times Japanese expenditures. Jiang also calculates that the average energy use per ton of output by Chinese steelmakers is roughly double that of Japanese or Korean manufacturers.

What were those reasons again for exempting China from the Kyoto Protocol?