Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- China may earn $15 billion from selling carbon emission credits, a senior official with the nation's top planning agency said.

The government has approved 885 Clean Development Mechanism projects by the end of October that will transfer a combined 1.5 billion tons of such credits to developed nations, Xie Zhenhua, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said today in Beijing.

The Clean Development Mechanism under the 1997 Kyoto protocol allows companies in industrialized countries to buy carbon credits from developing nations in order to comply with requirements to reduce emissions of gases blamed for global warming. The United Nations has to approve such agreements to ensure only genuine projects attract tradable emission credits.

``If all the projects are registered successfully, returns from the transfer will total about $15 billion,'' Xie said. More than $3 billion of the proceeds will be put into the China Clean Development Mechanism Fund, which was launched today by the Chinese government, he added.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, signed by more than 80 nations and the European Union, requires EU members and other industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels in the five years through 2012.

To contact the reporter for this story: Zhang Dingmin in Beijing at Dzhang14@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 9, 2007 03:18 EST