[ASSURAS] Welcome back. Right now, the U.S. and China are neck and neck in total energy consumption. But that's about to change. This fall, the U.S. government updated its global energy forecast, predicting China's consumption will almost double America's by 2035. While renewable energy sources will meet some of that increased demand, the Energy Information Administration says much more will come from finite resources -- fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. "energyNOW!" Chief Correspondent Tyler Suiters went to China for a look at the race for resources in our continuing look at "The China Factor."

[SUITERS] A tranquil garden tucked away in central Beijing. A series of skyscrapers along Shanghai's Pudong District. This international manufacturing plant in Tianjin. All of them powered primarily by coal. It supplies about 75% of China's electricity. And demand for that electricity just keeps growing.

[THOMAS BOHNER, ALSTOM BEIZHONG POWER PLANT] This one is a 600-megawatt generator rotor.

[SUITERS] Thomas Bohner's manufacturing plant makes parts for new coal-fired power plants. And it is a hot market. China is now burning through about three times as much coal as it did just a decade ago.

[BOHNER] The Chinese economy is growing fast, so therefore there is a demand for energy.

[RICHARD YEUNG] Certainly, it's a most important country for us.

[SUITERS] Richard Yeung heads Alstom Power's China division.

[YEUNG] The China market, up until now, is around 50% of the global market demand in power plants.

[SUITERS] 50%?

[YEUNG] Half of the power plant demand in the world is in China.

[SUITERS] And the vast majority of total energy demand in both China and the U.S. involves fossil fuels. These countries are the world's leading carbon emitters, and the world's leading competitors for oil.

[STEVEN CHU, SECRETARY OF ENERGY] China now has the largest car market in the world. Last year they sold 16.7 million cars, in one year. They passed the United States.

[SUITERS] The result -- the U.S. government says that in the next 25 years, America's demand for transportation energy -- primarily oil -- will grow by about 14%. China's demand will grow by more than 250%.

[DAVID PUMPHREY, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES] We and China basically share the same pool of oil and petroleum resources.

[SUITERS] David Pumphrey tracks energy security issues for a Washington think tank.

[PUMPHREY] One of the biggest energy security issues we face right now is China's growth in terms of its own demand. So that's really what is destabilizing energy markets.

[DOUGHER] I think there's a part of America that admires, too, what China's doing, and how rapidly they're growing, and may be a little anxious, too, about it.

[SUITERS] Rayola Dougher is a senior economic advisor at the American Petroleum Institute. Her concern -- the U.S. may now be outgunned in the competition for international oil supplies.

[DOUGHER] We have to bring the best to the table, when you're trying to purchase these resources. Can you outbid the other guy? And China's been doing a good job buying up resources.

[SUITERS] In 2009 and 2010, state-owned Chinese companies spent almost $50 billion on global oil and natural gas deals. And according to business consulting firm IHS, last year alone, about a quarter of all the money spent buying up the world's oil and gas assets came from China.

Along with all the acquisitions, Beijing has loaned tens of billions of dollars to countries like Russia, Venezuela, and Angola, to secure access to their rich oil supplies.

[DOUGHER] They can come into a region and say, "We'll build you a school, we'll build the road, we'll do this, we'll do that," and they can outbid our companies if they want to.

[SUITERS] Among China's recent partnerships, opening an oil import pipeline from Russia. Buying up part of a Brazilian subsidiary of a Spanish oil company, with rights to a gigantic deep-sea oil and gas field. And purchasing a stake in an oil sands company in Canada, an area where the U.S. already gets a significant amount of its imported oil, an amount that would increase if the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada through the U.S. gets built. But Pumphrey says these Chinese deals aren't about energy security alone.

[PUMPHREY] They really want to go out there and make money.

[SUITERS] A mutual goal that's leading to international cooperation as well as competition. One area of shared interest -- shale gas, natural gas trapped in shale rock. Chinese native Kang Wu leads the China Energy Project at Hawaii's East-West Center.

[KANG WU] Maybe in 15, 20 years, then the role of unconventional gas will be very important for the country.

[SUITERS] The U.S. and China hold about a third of the world's recoverable reserves of shale gas, but unlike the U.S., China is only just beginning to tap that resource. This year, China completed its very first shale well. A process that now takes several weeks in the U.S. took 11 months in China. So China is investing in American know-how, spending more than $1.5 billion in the last year for stakes in a pair of U.S. shale ventures.

[KANG WU] So the significance is, that means China, the Chinese national oil companies, continue to push overseas. They go pretty much everywhere.

[SUITERS] And unless both countries can agree to burn fewer fossil resources, Secretary Chu says this race won't have a winner.

[CHU] Their leadership makes no bones about it. They say the climate's changing. Humans have caused it. If we don't do something about it, it will be devastating to China and the rest of the world.

[PUMPHREY] I think it's become very easy to point to China, well, that's the cause of our problems, when, in some ways, we are the cause of our problems and we need to deal with them ourselves.

[SUITERS] In China, Tyler Suiters, "energyNOW!"

[ASSURAS] A quick note -- "energyNOW!"'s initial funding comes from the American Clean Skies Foundation, which is funded in part by Chesapeake Energy, a major player in the natural gas industry. We are editorially independent.

And some more perspective about just how radically China's energy demand has changed. It produced more oil than it could use as recently as 20 years ago. An even more dramatic turnaround -- in 2008, China exported more coal than it imported. By the very next year, 2009, China had to import more than 100 million tons of coal to meet its own demand.