China considering cap on greenhouse gas pollution

China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is considering plans to set an absolute cap on its carbon dioxide emissions from 2016, a top government adviser said.

The target will be written into China's next five-year plan, which comes into force in 2016, He Jiankun, the chairman of China's Advisory Committee on Climate Change, told a conference in Beijing.

"The government will use two ways to control carbon dioxide emissions in the next five-year plan, by intensity and an absolute cap," said He, a former vice-president at Tsinghua University.

This is the first time that a senior government adviser has publicly spoken about a timetable for China's carbon cap, but He later tried to play down the significance of his statement.

"This is still a proposal made by Chinese experts after extensive research, [but is] not yet a government decision," he told the South China Morning Post.

The statement comes after the United Sstates, the world's second-biggest emitter, announced for the first time plans to rein in carbon emissions from its power sector, a move the Obama administration hopes can inject ambition into slow-moving international climate negotiations.

China has set a target to reduce its carbon intensity, or carbon emissions per unit of economic growth, by between 40 per cent and 45 per cent by 2020 from 2005 levels.