China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is considering plans to set an absolute cap on its carbon dioxide emissions from 2016. The target will be written into China’s next Five Year Plan, which comes into force in 2016, He Jiankun, Chairman of China’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change, told a conference in Beijing. This is the first time that a senior government adviser has publicly spoken about a timetable for China’s carbon cap, but He later tried to play down the significance of his statement. “This is still a proposal made by Chinese experts after extensive research, but is not yet a government decision,” he told the South China Morning Post. China has set a target to reduce its carbon intensity, or carbon emissions per unit of economic growth, by between 40% and 45% by 2020 from 2005 levels. Developed nations have accused Beijing of holding back progress in UN talks on climate change due to its reluctance to take on a quantified emission reduction target, which is considered more stringent than an intensity target. Chinese negotiators have been arguing that as a developing nation, the country should not accept a binding target as do its industrialized counterparts. Having a domestic carbon cap would help pave the way for China to take on binding targets internationally after 2020. Despite the absolute cap on carbon dioxide, He told the conference that China’s greenhouse gas emissions would only peak in 2030, at around 11 billion tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent. Emissions now stand at between 7 billion to 9.5 billion tons. This scenario would depend on China achieving a real reduction in coal consumption from sometime between 2020 or 2025 and on the nation meeting its target of having 150-200 gigawatt (GW) of nuclear power capacity by 2030, the South China Morning Post reports.