Chinese President Xi Jinping to announce cap-and-trade program to cut emissions

During a White House summit meeting with President Obama on Friday, President Xi Jinping of China will announce a national program, launching in 2017, that will limit and put a price on greenhouse gas emissions, Obama administration officials said Thursday.

Xi will share that China, the world's biggest polluter, plans to create a cap-and-trade system, where a cap will be put on the amount of carbon pollution that can be emitted per year. Companies can buy and sell permits to pollute, and there will be a price incentive for generating power from low-carbon sources, The New York Times reports. China will also provide financing to poorer countries in order to help them develop projects to reduce emissions.

Negotiations have been taking place since April, officials said, and this plan builds upon the foundation set by Obama and Xi in Beijing last year, when they set hefty emissions-reduction targets for their respective countries.

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