China to Place Limit on Coal Use in 2020 BEIJING - China plans to set a cap on coal consumption in 2020, an important step for the country in trying to achieve a recently announced goal of having carbon dioxide emissions peak by around 2030. The State Council, China's cabinet, released details of an energy strategy late Wednesday that includes capping coal consumption at 4.2 billion tons in 2020 and having coal be no more than 62 percent of the primary energy mix by that year. Worldwide, coal burning for industrial use is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, which are the biggest catalyst of global climate change. China is the biggest emitter of greenhouses gases in the world, and it uses as much coal each year as the rest of the world combined. In theory, coal consumption might increase beyond 2020, but some researchers say economic trends show the rate of growth in coal use slowing in coming years and peaking about 2020. That means the State Council's timeline is consistent with the findings of those researchers. The numbers announced Wednesday might be further formalized in China's next five-year plan, whose details will be released around March. Last week, President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China announced a joint pledge to cut or limit carbon dioxide emissions from his country. China said it would reach an emissions peak "around 2030" and energy from sources other than fossil fuels would make up 20 percent of the total mix by that year. That announcement was praised by environmental advocates as a significant political move by the two nations. Environmental advocates on Thursday welcomed the State Council's announcement this week. But, as with the "around 2030" pledge on peak emissions, they said China could make a greater effort - for example, China could cap coal consumption even earlier or at a lower level. "We think it's definitely a positive sign, in line with what they've said they're going to do," said Alvin Lin, China climate and energy policy director in the Beijing office of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group based in New York. But "we'd like to see it a bit lower than that," he said, "if you're trying to meet the air pollution and air quality targets that they have set, and if you consider all the other environmental and health impacts of coal and the greenhouse gas emissions of coal." Some Chinese officials began tackling the problem of coal burning with vigor in 2013, when the public outcry over toxic smog - Chinese cities are among the world's most polluted - reached a high pitch. In September 2013, the government announced that provinces in populous parts of eastern China would try to cut coal consumption. Analysts for Greenpeace East Asia said the amount of coal consumed in the first nine months of 2014 might actually have dropped by 1 to 2 percent compared with the same period last year, based on data from a national coal industry association. The miasmic air remains poisonous, though; the United States Embassy air monitor in Beijing labeled the air quality on Wednesday and Thursday "hazardous." Last year, China consumed 3.61 billion tons of coal, and coal made up 66 percent of the primary energy mix. Li Shuo, a researcher at Greenpeace East Asia, said those figures indicate that China's goals for 2020 should be more ambitious. "What they laid out is a reference point, and then they will work from there to squeeze out more stuff," he said. China's recent announcements on coal consumption and the 2030 emissions peak could weaken arguments in the United States by opponents of President Obama's climate change policy, who often ask why America should act if China is not committed, said Alex L. Wang, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who studies Chinese environmental policy and regulations. "Opponents of climate change regulation in the U.S. have long used China's emissions as an excuse for inaction on the U.S. side," he said. Last week's joint announcement is the beginning of the end for this line of argument.