China has committed for the first time to not only stop increasing carbon emissions, but to actually cutting them by 7 to 10 per cent by 2035, a move that reinvigorates the global emissions reductions push, even as the United States withdraws from the Paris climate change agreement.

Outlining China’s new carbon targets in a video link to the UN climate conference in New York, President Xi Jinping said “green and low carbon transition is the trend of our time”.

However, a day after US President Donald Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, Mr Xi noted that “some countries are against” that trend.

China’s targets make it the absolute global leader in climate change, a hugely significant development given it is currently the largest carbon polluter, and set the world’s two superpowers on completely diverging paths on energy with Mr Trump pushing for a revival of fossil fuel based energy.

Mr Xi told the conference that China would increase solar, wind and hydropower to run more than 30 per cent of its power system over the next decade.

He also committed to making “new energy vehicles the mainstream in the sales of new vehicles”.

His speech came shortly before Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese outlined Australia’s new climate reduction targets for 2035 — announced in Australia last week — to the conference.

Australia has committed to cutting its emissions by between 62 and 70 per cent by 2035.

Mr Albanese says he welcomed the pledge by China to lower emissions.

“It is good that there is progress being made, we would like there to be more,” he said.

When asked about Mr Trump’s attack on climate action during his address to the UN on Wednesday, the prime minister refused to “give a running commentary” on the US leader.

Australia’s national targets are higher than a number of comparable countries like Japan, Canada and New Zealand.

Members of the European Union failed to formally set a target for 2035 before the deadline last week, but EU President Ursula von der Leyen told the UN conference that the group’s nationally determined contribution “would range between 66 per cent and 72 per cent”.

“We will formally submit our NDC ahead of [the climate change conference in Brazil next month],” Ms von der Leyen said.

“But in parallel, we are also looking ahead. We’re working on a 2040 target of a proposed 90 per cent emission reduction. That is our way to climate neutrality by 2050.”

Mr Albanese told the conference that, 10 years after the Paris climate change agreement was struck, it is now “the decisive decade for acting on the environmental challenge of climate change but also seizing the economic opportunities of clean energy”.

“We all grasped the scale and the urgency of our task. We all understand the consequences of inaction for our environment.”