China has become a global leader in policy and diplomacy on limiting the effects of climate change, but it still needs to take significant steps to curb its own carbon dioxide emissions, according to a report released on Thursday.

The report, written by David Sandalow, a former United States energy official now at Columbia University, takes a broad look at emissions and coal use in 2017 in China, which is by far the world’s top emitter of the heat-trapping gases that accelerate climate change. The study also analyses recent policy moves on climate by the country’s government and by the Communist Party.

China has wide-ranging climate policies, enshrined in the national Five-Year Plans and in blueprints at provincial and local levels. As a result, the report says, it is on its way to meeting major climate change goals, including lowering a measure known as carbon intensity, having carbon dioxide emissions reach a peak no later than 2030 and having a fifth of energy come from non-fossil-fuel sources by that year.

At the same time, the report says, if China’s carbon emissions continue at the current pace, nations will find it harder to meet important climate change policy goals — most notably limiting the average global temperature increase to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above preindustrial levels.