US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said on Friday he will travel to China this year to promote sales of US clean energy goods as part of the Obama administration's effort to fight global warming.

"This would be a win-win for jobs in the United States, as well as addressing a very serious problem of the planet," Locke told Reuters in an interview.

A bigger role must be found for improving energy efficiency in any new U.N. deal aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, a leading China-based project developer said on Thursday.

PRESIDENT OBAMA and the other leaders at the Group of 20 meeting last month vowed to both pursue a

Energy scarcity has become more serious for the energy-deficient growing economies having insufficient resources to combat the environmental pollution, said former HEC chairman Dr Attaur Rehman in his inaugural speech as chief guest at a three-day international conference.

China is set to smash its target for a roll-out of solar power by 2020 more than fivefold and possibly even tenfold, a researcher with the National Development and Reform Commission, the economic planning ministry, said on Tuesday.

Under the NDRC's renewable energy plan set out in 2007, China would have 1,800 megawatts of installed solar capacity by 2020.

The government on Monday constituted a committee to take provincial governments on board for drafting amendments in the 'Power Policy 2002', particularly hydropower projects, official sources told Business Recorder. The decision was taken in a meeting of the Board of Private Power and Infrastructure Board (PPIB), presided over by the Minister for Water and Power, Pervez Ashraf.

China plans to close 15 gigawatts (GW) of small coal-fired power generators this year, as part of measures to improve energy efficiency and reduce pollution, the National Development and Reform Commission said on Monday.

If the goal is achieved, the country will close a total of nearly 50 GW by the end of this year that had been planned for the five years through 2010.

Two local companies that assemble quality energy saving lights are threatened with imported substandard and low-cost bulbs, which reportedly fall short of saving energy to the expected extent, amid a recent rise in demand for such bulbs.

Private U.S. company Tang Energy Group said on Friday a Chinese company has agreed to provide $300 million in financing for its wind power projects.

China must swiftly decouple its rapid economic growth from rising carbon dioxide emissions for global greenhouse gas levels to stay manageable, the authors of a new study said, urging sweeping support to help that transition.