Now a green wave is starting to sweep China. This shift, brings with it greater energy security, improved economic prospects and enhanced environmental sustainability. China deserves credit for its efforts so far to move to a clean-energy future, and it deserves global support for the challenges it will face going forward.

China's rapid economic growth over the recent decades has brought huge benefits to the country and to the world, not the least of which has been the provision of electricity to around half a billion new people in a very short period of time and a rapid increase in its citizens' incomes. These remarkable advances have relied heavily on the consumption of coal. Reliance on coal to fuel economic development is certainly nothing new: Europe and the United States did the same, and together these two regions account for 60% of cumulative greenhouse-gas emissions since the industrial revolution.

A major milestone in efforts to combat climate change will come in six months at the COP 21 climate negotiations in Paris. As these talks approach, Chinese officials are among those leading the push to decouple economic growth from greenhouse-gas emissions. Indeed, China has already helped show the world that such a decoupling is possible. Just last year, global energy-related CO2 emissions stalled while the global economy grew 3% -- the first time in International Energy Agency (IEA) records that global emissions have held steady in the absence of an economic downturn. China played a key role in making this happen as Chinese coal consumption declined while the economy grew by more than 7%. This was possible thanks to China's strong investment in renewables, nuclear and energy efficiency, which are already changing the link between energy and the economy in China.

China is already the undisputed global leader in clean energy, having invested more than any other nation in renewables. China in 2014 spent over $80 billion in new renewables generating capacity, more than the European Union ($46 billion), more than Japan ($37 billion) and more than the United States ($34 billion). China in 2014 remained the largest wind power market. That same year, according to the National Energy Administration, China installed 10.6 GW of solar capacity, the world's largest increase. As a result of China's cumulative investment in renewables, low-carbon sources of power accounted for almost one quarter of China's electricity supply in 2014, up from 15% less than a decade ago. China has also made huge improvements in the way it uses energy.

Going forward, we at the IEA see many positive and encouraging signs that China will continue to play a constructive role in the global fight against climate change. The latest step came on 30 June when China formally submitted its pledge for reducing greenhouse gases as part of the UN climate negotiation process. Under the plan, China would achieve a peak in its CO2 emissions around 2030 if not earlier, and its share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy demand would rise to roughly 20% by around the same time.

IEA analysis shows that while China's intentions may be ambitious, they can be achieved by ramping up the range of complementary energy and climate policies China already has in place. Such measures include targets to reduce the carbon intensity of the economy, to reduce reliance on coal in the economy or to use it more efficiently, to introduce more stringent fuel-economy standards in transport private cars. Putting a meaningful price on CO2 emissions is viewed by many as integral to achieving our global climate goal, and here, too, China is leading. China's seven pilot carbon trading schemes are all operational and, taken together, mean that the country has the second-largest carbon market in the world.

All of these measures make sense for China, not only from the long-term perspective of tackling climate change but also because they help address the very pressing problem of local pollution. Given the pace at which China's energy-related emissions of greenhouse gases have grown, the government's hope of achieving a peak in emissions by 2030 will require a significant change of direction. Fortunately, China is fully committed to this transition. China's effort to divorce economic growth from emissions increases changes the rules of the game and serves as a shining example for other developing countries. For all these reasons, China's clean-energy leadership should be lauded.

Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA, will take over as the organisation's executive director on 1 September 2015.

An Chinese edition of this article appears on People's Daily, 为引领全球清洁能源发展的中国鼓掌.