China's Emissions to Peak 'Around 2030'

Paris: China, the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluter, has pledged to peak carbon emissions "by around 2030", Prime Minister Li Keqiang's office announced.

Beijing's long-awaited contribution to a roster of global carbon curbs was detailed at a meeting in Paris between Li and French President Francois Hollande, Li's office said in a statement.

Hollande will preside over a year-end UN conference in Paris tasked with producing a world pact on curbing climate change.

"China's carbon dioxide emission will peak by around 2030 and China will work hard to achieve the target at an even earlier date," said the statement.

Carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP will drop 60-65 per cent over 2005 levels by 2030, and the share of non-fossil fuel in primary energy consumption will grow to about 20 percent.

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The pledge closely echoes and formalizes undertakings made by Beijing after a US-China summit last November.

It will now be entered into a roster of pledges kept by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which lists 13 other commitments to date from the convention's 195 parties.

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These pledges, known as 'intended nationally determined contributions' (INDCs), are at the heart of the highly-anticipated Paris pact, due to take effect from 2020.

Its goal will be to limit average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.