China urged to cut CO2 with CCS technology

Up to now, concerns about safety and technological reliability have prevented CCS from receiving additional funding through the United Nations' clean development mechanism, or CDM.

The CDM allows developed countries to invest in environmentally sound but economically marginal projects in the developing world in exchange for UN-issued carbon credits, which can then be sold on the market or used to fulfill mandatory emission cuts.

Improvement

A decline in China's energy intensity, or the amount of energy it uses to produce each unit of national income, picked up pace in the first half of 2009, the country's top economic planner said at the start of this month.

The country used 3.35 percent less energy to generate each dollar of gross domestic product (GDP) in the six months through June 2009 than a year earlier, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a statement on its website.

China has set a goal of cutting energy intensity by 20 percent by 2010.

Its efforts appear to be gathering steam after an unsteady start, and in 2008 energy intensity fell nearly 5 percent.

In the first half of this year it was also down in several key sectors, the commission said. Power was down 9.51 percent, oil and petrochemicals were down 8.21 percent and steel was down 8.43 percent.

Climate role

In recent years the efficiency drive has also been promoted by China as a key part of a slate of measures to curb growth in greenhouse emissions, as it comes under pressure as the highest annual emitter of the gasses that cause global warming.

It will be in the spotlight this December when the world tries to settle a global framework for tackling climate change at the United Nations-led talks in Copenhagen

The government says that its emissions per capita and over the course of history are lower than those of rich nations that went through long, dirty industrialization.

China wants technology and financing help from developed countries to help it achieve cleaner growth, arguing that it should not have to sacrifice economic progress when it is still trying to lift millions out of poverty.