China will need to meet the huge funding gap of more than 2 trillion yuan ($330.6 billion) in climate finance funds by 2020 to combat climate change and invest in low-carbon development, a new report said on Wednesday.

The report, released jointly by the Research Center for Climate and Energy Finance and the Counselors' Office of the State Council, an advisory organ under the State Council, China's cabinet, said that demand for climate financing would rise to 2.75 trillion yuan and peak at more than 3 trillion yuan by 2040.

The average annual supply is only 525.6 billion yuan, which means that the funding gap will be more than 2 trillion yuan in 2020, according to the report titled 2013 China Climate Finance Report.

"Climate finance must be designed to ensure adequate money flows for climate action and there are many choices for financing, but the public funds from developed countries will be the main source in improving climate finance institution, and enlarging supply scale and leveraging private investment," Wang Yao, the researcher and the director of RCCEF, said, adding that the structural imbalance is one of the main reasons for the huge funding gap.

lvchang@chinadaily.com.cn