China's pledge to be carbon neutral by 2060 sets an example for other countries, and its energy policies will play a central role in achieving that goal, said energy experts.

"The carbon neutral pledge has really done a lot to inject new momentum into the global climate negotiations," said Barbara Finamore, founder of the China Program of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based environmental advocacy group.

"Shortly after China's announcement, we had Japan and South Korea make their own climate neutral pledges, and just recently we understand that India is considering adopting its own 2050 net-zero pledge, which probably wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for China," she said at a recent webinar hosted by US-China Series, an organization that promotes dialogue.

President Xi Jinping announced China's pledge to have carbon dioxide emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060 during a United Nations General Assembly meeting by video link in September.

In December, China announced new target of increasing the share of nonfossil fuels in its primary energy consumption to 25 percent by 2030 and boosting its installed capacity of wind and solar power to more than 1,200 gigawatts by 2030.

"Peak carbon emissions by 2030 was really a big deal; carbon neutrality by 2060 was a big pledge. China is stepping out and taking a global leadership role and getting ahead of the US," said Michal Meidan, director of the China Energy Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

She said one of the "big drivers "behind the 2060 pledge is "an industrial opportunity with the energy transition". There's a "threat" from the European Union carbon border adjustment mechanism, which would impose a charge on imports into the EU of certain raw materials from "less climate-ambitious countries", she added.

"If the Chinese industrial structure, not just the energy structure, is not fit for the purpose in an increasingly carbon-conscious world, then the entire Chinese economic model loses out," said Meidan.

As to energy transition technologies, Finamore said, China already has a positive track record of innovation in wind, solar and electric-vehicle technologies.

"These core technologies were initially acquired from abroad, but what China has excelled in is developing economies of scale and manufacturing innovation that have brought down the cost of these technologies to the point where they are close to being competitive with their fossil fuel alternatives," she said.

"I was really interested to see that recently, China has been working, as has the EU as well as the US, on developing the next generation of solar cells－the perovskite solar cells that could really transform the industry," said Finamore.

Perovskites are materials with a specific crystal structure, named after a mineral with that structure, that are used to create solar cells with high performance and low costs.

Such solar cells have been seen mostly in research labs, but China has recently opened a production facility that will realize "economies of scale and manufacturing innovation on that very promising new technology", she added.

The tensions between the United States and China and export restrictions on certain technologies by the US have served as a "wake-up call "for China to be more self-reliant, as reflected in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), said Finamore.

"China includes a target to increase its spending on R&D, but also to increase the proportion of that dedicated to basic research. Even more, it's talking about reorienting its entire system of research labs and developing systems of national labs," she said. "China's also focusing on having its research institutes work more closely with industry. They're giving tax breaks to industry for conducting basic research with research institutes.

"It's a race right now, and it's going to be very interesting to see who comes out ahead and also what opportunities there are for cooperation in ways that benefit different countries," said Finamore, adding that despite the US-China tensions, there will be some low-level or small areas of cooperation between the two countries on climate.