China CO2 emissions may have peaked in 2014 - study

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's carbon emissions, by far the world's highest, may have peaked in 2014, according to a study published on Monday, potentially putting Beijing under pressure to toughen its climate pledges.

China has promised to bring greenhouse gas emissions to a peak by "around 2030" as part of its commitments to a global pact to combat global warming, signed in Paris last year. Evidence that the country has peaked much earlier could lead to concerns that its existing targets are too easy.

The study, by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics, said that the 2030 peak was a very conservative estimate.

"It is quite possible that emissions will fall modestly from now on, implying that 2014 was the peak," said the report, noting that recent data already showed that China's emissions fell in 2015.

"If emissions do grow above 2014 levels ... that growth trajectory is likely to be relatively flat, and a peak would still be highly likely by 2025," the authors said.

Xie Zhenhua, China's senior climate change envoy, said at a press conference on Monday that the country's emissions had not peaked in 2014 and were still growing.

While total energy consumption rose 0.9 percent to 4.3 billion tonnes of standard coal in 2015, coal consumption fell 2.2 percent on a year earlier, according to Reuters calculations based on official data.

Chinese carbon experts said any fall in emissions in 2015 would be mainly due to a slowdown in China's economy, and it was unlikely that emissions had peaked so early.