China will set new targets to control emissions

China will set more targets to control greenhouse gases in a submission to the UN next year, a senior foreign ministry official said, as negotiators around the world to try to forge a post-2020 deal on climate change. Gao Feng said China's decision last week to peak its carbon emissions around 2030 could shake up other emerging economies such as Brazil, India and South Africa, which have so far rejected attempts to impose carbon limits on developing countries.

India has already said it would not follow in China's footsteps, and some environmentalists say China needs to do much more.

The comments come after China signed a "historic pact" with the United States last week in which China agreed that its greenhouse-gas emissions would peak by around 2030, and non-fossil fuels would generate 20 per cent of its energy by the same deadline.

"The 2030 deadline for a peak in carbon emissions and a 20 per cent non-fossil-fuel contribution to the total energy mix will only be a part of China's submissions to the UN," said Gao, the special climate representative at the ministry.

It was the first time China had agreed to cap carbon emissions by a specific deadline. In the past, China, like other developing nations, resisted setting emissions targets that it said would hold back economic development.

Gao admitted the commitment did not include a specific ceiling for China's total greenhouse-gas emissions, prompting criticism that the 2030 pledge lacked real ambition.

Guo Hongyu, a policy researcher on climate at Greenovation Hub, a grass-roots green group, said China needed to go further on cuts. Guo said some sectors that were big sources of emissions were already seeing severe overcapacity and would start to shrink anyway, leading to a decline in carbon emissions.