China should develop a low-carbon economy, as a way to drive economic growth without mitigating the effects of global warming, experts on climate change said at a seminar held in Beijing on Monday and yesterday.

The seminar, entitled "The Low-Carbon Economy and China's Energy & Environmental Policy" was organized by the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, which comes under the country's top environmental administration.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) under the Untied Nations, said: "China should prepare a road map of how to move to a low-carbon economy and how the cost of such a move can be met.

"Some renewable energies are still very expensive, so we will have to research how much it will cost."

He said that the seminar was a good start for China in exploring the possibility of a low-carbon economy, which would help protect the environment and contribute to cutting greenhouse gases (GHGs).

The world has a shared responsibility to cut GHG emissions, Pachauri said.

Linda Adams, secretary for environmental protection at the California Environmental Protection Agency in the United States told China Daily that the biggest problem China had in developing a low-carbon economy was its high dependence on coal-fired power plants, which generate 70 percent of the country's total power.

"Technology does not yet exist to produce clean coal and sequestrate carbon," she said.

Adams highlighted the role of NGOs in urging the government to take action to mitigate climate change.

She cited the case of the US-based NGO Environmental Defense, which along with other NGOs, won a Supreme Court ruling against the US Environmental Protection Agency, which has been forced to reconsider its stance on tailpipe emissions, which account for almost 20 percent of the USA's carbon contribution to global warming.

(China Daily April 25, 2007)