To Liu Lei, it was meaningful to take the metro, instead of driving, to reach the China Energy and Environment Summit, which concluded on Tuesday.

"After a heavy snow Sunday, it's really cold in the morning. I spent nearly one hour on Line 5 and Line 10 to come to the venue," said the 44-year-old man, who is a chief advisor to a Taiwan software company.

Liu, a self-branded environmentalist from Sichuan Province, said he wants to use his actions to support environmental protection and China's efforts to cope with the climate change.

He, along with other 300 government officials, entrepreneurs and industry experts, was invited to the 2-day forum to discuss clean energy in China.

He said Beijing's public transit system has developed quickly over the last several years and is capable of providing fast and convenient service.

In face of heavy air pollution and road congestion, Beijing has been very aggressive in building a strong public transit system, especially the metro, while calling residents to drive less and use the metro more.

Apart from Beijing, other big cities across the country have also spent heavily in building public transportation facilities.

Though China's auto industry is expanding fast, yet government officials and environmentalists maintain the country's fragile environment and the impacts of the climate change cannot allow it to develop an auto market in the scale of the United States.

Green drive

Apart from the frenzy in building less-polluting public transit system, China has also been very aggressive in developing renewable energy such as wind and solar.

By the end of last year, China had a total installed wind power capacity of more than 12 GW, which put it one of the global top four. The sector has seen over 100-percent growth year-on-year over the past three years, according to the National Energy Administration. And officials estimated China's wind power capacity will be close to 20 GW by the end of this year.

In solar power, China has the world's largest solar heat concentration surface for water heating. It ranks top in the nuclear power capacity under construction.

China has also been ambitious in improving energy efficiency, calling for a 20 percent reduction in energy intensity between 2005 and 2010.

"In developing clean energy and coping with climate change, China is one of the most active governments in the world," said Li Junfeng, deputy director of the Energy Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

Chinese President Hu Jintao raised four targets in dealing with climate change at the UN climate change summit held in New York in September, which Li said demonstrated China's attitude in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

One of the four targets is to increase the proportion of non-fossil fuel in the nation's energy supply to 15 percent by 2020.

According to Li, the US government has not set a specific target on the proportion of non-fossil fuel to total energy supply, while the EU and Japan put the target at 20 percent.

However, China's energy consumption is still growing 6 percent annually on average, while Japan and the EU are seeing consumption declining, Li told the forum.

"China has impressive policies and has made serious efforts on energy saving, energy conservation and improving energy efficiency," said Bernice Lee, Research Director of Energy, Environment and Resource Governance under Royal Institute of International Affairs.

And, "China is genuinely committed to tackling the impacts of climate change, as manifested by its national strategy," she said.

Daniel Rosen, Principal of Rhodium Group and Visiting Fellow of Peterson Institute for International Economics, said China's efforts and achievements in dealing with climate change could prod US Congress to increase budget on climate change measures.

He said China is doing an excellent job in exploring wind and solar energy and it would become a big competitor to the United States in the future, though it still lags behind the United States in technological innovations and venture capital.