'China may meet carbon emissions goal early'

Beijing: China, currently, the world's largest carbon emitter, is on track to meet its emission goals up to a decade early, official media reported.

For decades, top Chinese cities, including capital Beijing, were engulfed with heavy industrial pollution specially during the winter making the pollution control, specially generated by coal consumption a top priority for the government during the last few years.

China is one of the early signatories of the Paris Agreement on climate change and has pledged to halt the rise in carbon dioxide emissions by around 2030.

The Chinese government during the past few years has allocated billions of dollars in either shifting the heavily polluted industries out cities like Beijing or modernised them cutting the coal consumption drastically.

Researchers from China's Nanjing University, Tsinghua University, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Harvard University in the US examined carbon dioxide emissions from 50 Chinese cities from 2000 to 2016 and found a close relationship between per capita emissions and per capita gross domestic product (GDP), Xinhua news agency quoted an international study findings as saying.

The 50 Chinese cities account for about 35 per cent of China's total carbon emissions and 51 per cent of the country's GDP.

The study found that carbon emissions peak for most Chinese cities when GDP reaches about USD 21,000 dollars per person.

According to the study published in the monthly journal Nature Sustainability, the carbon emissions in China should peak between 2021 and 2025, about five to ten years ahead of the Paris target.