In terms of coping with climate change, China, as a responsible country, will shoulder its due responsibility for its own development and its consequences." —Zhou Dadi

Major economies in the world have raised various proposals to reduce carbon emissions by applying clean energies in a bid to tackle climate change. As a major consumer of coal, China is facing mounting pressure, and experts are wrangling about which clean energy should come first on the government agenda. To get a closer look at the current situation in China, Beijing Review reporter Liu Yunyun sat down with Zhou Dadi, Director General Emeritus of the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, who shared his insights on clean energy. Edited excerpts follow:

Beijing Review: As a major carbon-emission country, how serious is the situation now in China? Why has clean and green energy become such a hot topic?

Zhou Dadi: Climate change is mostly caused by the emission of carbon dioxide, which accounts for 70 percent of all greenhouse gases. In 2006 China surpassed the United States to become the biggest carbon emitter in the world. Though it is depressing, it is true and we cannot ignore it. Since 2005, our carbon emissions have soared with a 7-8 percent growth rate annually, which is in accordance with the growth in energy demand. China has 1.3 billion people, so even though the per-capita carbon emission is far less than that of the United States, our total emission of carbon dioxide is huge in size.

As the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, China is under heavy domestic pressure to reduce carbon emissions, because a warmer and riskier earth is something we do not want to see. The international community has reached consensus in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the excessive emission of greenhouse gases will lead to undesirable consequences in the ecological system. Hence reducing carbon emissions is a mandate for all countries. In terms of coping with climate change, China, as a responsible country, will shoulder its due responsibility for its own development and its consequences. In the meantime, China is also committed to protecting the world ecological environment.

At the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen scheduled to be held at the end of this year, what kind of proposals will China raise?

From our own perspective, as we are the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, we are voluntarily committed to reducing carbon emissions. However, on a global scale, developed countries must take the initiative, and this prerequisite has never changed. That is because their per-capita carbon emission far outpaces that of developing countries, including China.

In terms of per-capita energy consumption, Europe and Japan are three times higher than China, while the United States and Canada are six times higher. Therefore, it is a two-way street. On the one hand, developed countries should take sincere measures to cope with climate change because their overall emissions are huge. They constitute less than 20 percent of the world's population, but their aggregated greenhouse gas emissions account for over 40 percent of the world total. They are duty-bound to make greater efforts. Of course, on the other hand, developing countries should also make due contributions. Economic development relies heavily on energy supply. China lags dozens of years behind Europe and the United States in terms of industrialization. At present, global oil resources have been carved up, and the age of low oil prices has long gone. That is why it is so much more difficult for us to turn away from coal while focusing on the development of relatively clean oil and natural gas to fuel national economic growth.