China will likely propose additional carbon reduction targets when it submits its climate proposal to the United Nations ahead of the Paris climate talks happening later this year, a climate expert said on Wednesday.

"Looking forward for climate commitments for the Paris Agreement, we expect that China will likely have an additional carbon intensity reduction target for 2030," said Alvin Lin, director for the National Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) China initiative, during a press briefing. The NRDC is a New York City-based,non-profit international environmentaladvocacy group. Founded in 1970, NRDC says it has 1.4 million members, with activities nationwide and expertise from more than 400 lawyers, scientists and other policy experts.

"Just what that carbon intensity reduction target will be, that's going to be important for providing a signal about what the peak of CO2 emissions will look like and what levels that might look like," he said during the briefing held by the NRDC.

Lin said that China's proposal - which is called an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) - will most likely be a continuation of the joint announcement China made with the US in Beijing in November, when China said it would peak its CO2 emissions by 2030 and make its best efforts to peak earlier.

The announcement was a major climate proposal from China since it was the first time the country announced a goal to peak its emissions, climate experts have said.

The INDC, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, lays out a country's contributions and goals, and proposes steps that it will take to achieve those goals. Countries that have the ability to do so are supposed to submit their INDCs by March. Other countries are likely to submit later this year, but no later than the Paris climate talks to be held in the fall.

The US submitted its INDC on Tuesday, saying that it would reduce emissions 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, as previously announced in China last November.

Rhea Suh, the president of the NRDC, said in a statement following the submission that it sends a "powerful" message to the world. "This announcement builds on America's leadership that already is delivering notable breakthroughs, such as the recent commitments by China and Mexico to join the global effort," she said.

China's INDC would probably focus on issues that are important domestically, much like that of India's or other Asian countries, Lin said. Going forward, China's INDC climate commitments will look to improve its own domestic environment and expand its clean energy strategies, he said.

"I think notably, we know that China has been having some of the world's most severe air pollution, so a lot of this is being done for domestic reasons, especially trying to address the pollution from the coal consumption in the country," Lin said. "The regional coal consumption caps for the area around Beijing and around Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta, for example - coal consumption actually fell for the first time last year by 2.9 percent. That's another very significant change for China."

China's energy situation has been "undergoing rapid change", Lin said, with the country becoming the largest wind power market in the world within a decade, and on its way to becoming the country with the largest solar power capacity as well.

"I think as part of the joint announcement with the US last November, both countries obviously did their homework," he said.

amyhe@chinadailyusa.com