Under the proposed scheme, the companies that are Australia's largest carbon polluters, numbering fewer than 1,000, will be required, for the first time, to pay for their pollution.

"Every cent" of the revenue raised from the large polluters will be used to assist families with household bills, support jobs in the most affected industries and invest in programs to tackle climate change, Combet promised.

"The effect of the carbon price will be to cut pollution, drive investment in low emissions technologies and to transform our economy," said Combet. "We will see new cleaner energy sources and projects initiated in areas such as natural gas and renewables. We will also see new clean energy jobs and technologies develop."

However, the price on carbon is a hot button political issue. The opposition Liberal Party calls it "an ill-considered carbon tax" and contends the Labor Government's carbon tax "will slug household and business energy users at a time when they can least afford it," because of state government failures to invest in electricity infrastructure and the Gillard government's failure to address energy security.

The Australian Greens today joined the Gillard government in announcing an agreed pathway towards a carbon price that should commence on July 1, 2012, beginning the transformation of the coal-dependent Australian economy to clean energy.

Xie told the Forum that the National People's Congress has just adopted the outline for the 12th Five-Year Plan. During this period, he said, China will "promote energy saving and improve our energy efficiency to develop non-fossil energies and increase the forest carbon sink."

"The green and low carbon development has become a very important policy orientation of China's future development," he said.

"The proportion of non-fossil energy in the primary energy consumption will be increased to 11.4 percent," during the next five years, Xie said.

"We set the per unit GDP energy consumption reduction and the CO2 emission reduction by 16 percent and 17 percent respectively, compared to the year 2010, and a reduction of 33 percent and 34 percent respectively, compared to the year 2005," Xie stated, amidst an avalanche of numbers outlining China's recent efforts to control its greenhouse gas emissions.

"In order to achieve green and low carbon development now we have already carried out low carbon pilot projects in five provinces and eight municipalities," he said. "At the same time we also carried out carbon exchange pilot projects in Shanghai, Tianjin and Beijing."

The National Development and Reform Commission launched a national low-carbon province and low-carbon city experimental project in Beijing in August 2010. The project will be implemented in five provinces: Guangdong, Liaoning, Hubei, Shaanxi and Yunnan; and in eight cities: Tianjin, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Hangzhou, Nanchang, Guiyang and Baoding.

"In general," said Xie, "although China is now in the stage of a fast industrialization and urbanization, we will continue to make our contributions to the global effort of tackling climate change with our actions."