Facing rising energy needs from a wave of unprecedented urbanization, China will have to spend up to $86 billion a year to reach ambitious greenhouse gas-reduction targets, a United Nations report says, one of the first estimates of how much China's global warming targets will cost.

China 's leaders have pledged to cut carbon intensity--a measure of how much carbon is emitted relative to how much the economy produces--by 40% to 45% by the year 2020. Reaching the lower end of that range could actually save the country $30 billion a year from things like improvements to power plants that would increase energy efficiency and mean buying less coal, natural gas or oil.

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It is "proper and feasible for China to set its abatement target at 40% to 45%, even without technological and financial assistance from the international community," the China Human Development Report said.

The report's authors say China 's leaders will have to think twice about more ambitious goals because the costs quickly spiral up after the easiest improvements are made.

Even trying to reach a target of 51% could cost $86 billion a year, or 1.2% of projected gross domestic product, according to the report released Thursday by the U.N. Development Program in collaboration with Renmin University of China.

Some critics say even that's not enough to head off dramatic increases in the absolute amount of greenhouse gases that China emits because the intensity targets don't put absolute limits on China 's carbon output.

That posses a tough challenge for China . According to the U.N. study, an aggressive program to cut carbon intensity from 2005 levels 91% by 2050 would cost $1.6 trillion a year--6% of China 's projected economic output.

Who's going to pay that huge bill is a key question in global climate-change talks. China says that developed countries such as the U.S. have a responsibility to pay for the cleanup since they produced most of the carbon already in the atmosphere.

But since 2007 China has surpassed the U.S. to be the world's top greenhouse gas polluter, and Western countries counter that any improvements could be wiped out unless China and other fast-developing countries accept absolute caps on their carbon emissions.

The report's authors warn China has to take action or the economic gains of the past 30 years could be wiped out by the impacts of climate change, such as flooding and drought.

"No matter what, we can't continue development the same way," said lead writer Zou Ji, a professor at Renmin University .

Adding to the stresses is a huge new wave of urbanization, the report said. Over the next two decades, the authors project 350 million rural dwellers, more than the population of the U.S., will leave the countryside and move to cities, requiring the construction of 50,000 high rises and 170 new mass transport systems--double what Europe has.

That will push up China 's quickly rising energy needs. With cities already accounting for 85% of China 's greenhouse gases and energy use, the government has to find ways to cut down emissions, for example by better heating, which alone accounts for about one-third of China 's carbon, the report said.

The report, which comes just as parts of southwestern China slowly pull out of the worst drought in decades, lays out a series of policy suggestions for China to enrich its people without dangerously polluting by such measures as utilizing more energy-efficient building technology to leapfrog over older technologies.

Rolling out a domestic carbon tax and setting up a nationwide cap-and-trade scheme where companies could trade carbon quotas are among the suggestions.

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