CHINA’S output of greenhouse gases is set to start falling five years earlier than the largest emitter has pledged, according to a study by U.K. academics that indicates an increased chance of global warming staying at safe levels.

    The forecast of a peak in 2025 in a paper published yesterday former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern suggests China is acting faster than promised to shift to clean energy from fossil fuels. President Xi Jinping last year pledged that China’s emissions would peak by 2030.

    “China’s international commitment to peak carbon dioxide emissions around 2030 should be seen as a conservative upper limit from a government that prefers to under-promise and over-deliver,” Stern, now a professor at the London School of Economics, and his co-author, Fergus Green, wrote in the paper.

    The nation’s progress in reducing emissions is crucial to the success of global efforts to rein in climate change, because it spews about a quarter of all heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

    The China forecast “could hold open the possibility that global greenhouse gas emissions could be brought onto a pathway consistent with the international goal,” Stern and Green wrote.

    Chinese emissions are likely to rise to the equivalent of 12.5 billion to 14 billion tons of carbon dioxide before annual output begins to decline, according to the paper. The country spewed about 10.5 billion tons in 2011, the most recent data from the World Resources Institute indicates.

    “It is important that governments, businesses and citizens everywhere understand this fundamental change in China, reflect on their own ambitions on climate change, and adjust upwards expectations about the global market potential for low-carbon and environmental goods and services,” the authors said.(SD-Agencies)