China releases the country's first plan to deal with climate change

China echoed the Bush administration's stance on global warming Monday, refusing to set firm caps on its greenhouse-gas emissions and saying that economic growth remained its "first and overriding priority." Releasing the country's first plan to deal with climate change, the government rejected international demands that it should fix ceilings on Chinese emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. Instead, the plan acknowledges the threat global warming poses to China's economic growth and outlines energy conservation measures, new technologies, and alternative energy sources to cut the country's net CO2 output. China's reluctance to set firm limits on emissions will further complicate the efforts that European nations have launched to set new and binding greenhouse-gas limits when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2013.

China's targets to increase efficiency. The plan's key goal is to reduce the amount of energy needed to produce one unit of GDP by 20 percent by 2010. For example, for every $1 of additional economic output, China hopes to use, one day, 20 percent less energy. But at current rates, economic growth will outstrip the targeted 4-percent per year reduction, meaning there will be no overall reduction in emissions. One target the plan reiterates is to increase the use of renewable energy sources – such as hydropower, biofuel and wind-power – from 7 percent today to 10 percent by 2010 and to 16 percent by 2020. The government is also pledging to increase China's forest cover to 20 percent, to boost the natural absorption of some of the CO2 the country's factories emit. At the same time, the plan pins considerable hope on technological advances to burn coal more cleanly, capture and store CO2 emitted from refineries, cement factories and steel mills, and to conserve energy.