China's energy efforts offer hope for planet and concerns for competitors

The greatest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world has ambitious plans for clean power, writes James Kynge in Berlin

- James Kynge in Berlin

China's "artificial sun" - a scientific endeavour to create everlasting energy that does not pollute - racked up a new milestone earlier this year.

It managed to generate power for a record 1,066 seconds (17 minutes and 46 seconds), eclipsing the previous record of 403 seconds.

The long-term goal is to replicate the nuclear fusion that burns in the sun, a dream that has remained elusive to scientists worldwide after more than 70 years of trying. One of the formidable challenges inherent in the project has been dealing with extreme temperatures five times hotter than the real sun.

But while scientists seek to overcome these challenges, China is also breaking new ground with more conventional renewable energy. For the first time ever, the deployment of clean power in China has caused the country's carbon dioxide emissions to fall both in the first quarter of this year and over the past 12 months.

It is hard to overstate the importance of this. China is by far the world's biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that drive global warming, pumping more than twice the amount of carbon into the atmosphere as the second largest emitter, the US.