A US energy official is supportive of China's water-energy initiatives in its 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) and called for more water-energy cooperation between China and the United States.

Melanie Kenderdine, director of the Office of Energy Policy and Systems Analysis at the US Department of Energy (DOE), said a newly signed clean energy R&D partnership is an example of "successful international synergy in formulating energy policy" at a panel discussion at the Center on Global Energy Policy of Columbia University in New York on Monday.

The partnership includes major powers such as the US and China, which emit two-thirds of the world's greenhouse gases and nearly three quarters of the carbon dioxide from electricity.

According to Kenderdine, the partnership represents almost 70 percent of global gross domestic product and more than 80 percent of all government investment in clean energy research and development.

The Chinese government is proposing a strategic energy policy that is "clean, safe and thrifty" in its 13th Five-Year Plan. China will strive to develop renewable energy use and attempt to produce 350 million kilowatt hours of hydroelectricity output by 2020, according to the plan on the Xinhua News Agency website.

Kenderdine said that she was confident in the international synergies in investing in new-energy research and development.

She said that the DOE is currently supporting New Energy and Water Track, a program backed by the US-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC), to diversify sources of energy supply and improve energy efficiency. CERC is also supported by the Chinese Ministry of Housing, Rural and Urban Development.

Kenderdine said that as part of a larger energy-water "cross-cut strategy", the annual investment in the New Energy and Water Track Program is expected to grow from the current $2.5 million to approximately $10 million to $12 million within the next five years.

China's energy use is "coal-rich but water poor", she said, adding that coal accounts for 76 percent of China's total energy use.

China is looking to reduce water used in coal-fired power generation, which is "a timely and rewarding shift of energy policy", Kenderdine said.

Climate change may incidentally provide China with more water, said Kenderdine. She cited a report of an intergovernmental panel on climate change in 2007 that predicted that most parts of China would have more rainfall in the 21st century, rising from 5 percent to 40 percent more, depending on the region.

Long Yifan in New York contributed to this story.