How will clean development be financed?

Like most other populous emerging markets working on long-term solutions for sustainable development, China has been trying hard to adopt strategies that can achieve multiple objectives. These include shifting to an energy use pattern that relies more on renewable sources of energy rather than fossil fuels, reduces industrial and household pollution, and protects natural resources.

China has achieved phenomenal economic growth over the last four decades, and it is now the world's second-largest economy. However, this success has come at a heavy cost to the country's ecology and its environment. As China tries to address this damage, the biggest challenge it faces is transitioning to a development path that ensures economic growth with environmental sustainability.

This is a significant challenge, as can be seen from renewable energy. Coal remains the major source of electricity in China. Apart from producing thermal power, coal is also used in several parts of China, particularly northern China, for heating purposes during the winter. The result of the extensive use of coal has been accumulation of enormous stock of carbon in the atmosphere. China now plans to generate most of its electricity from renewable energy sources. It plans to have the capacity to produce 200 gigawatts of electricity from solar power and 250 GW of electricity from wind power by 2020.