The world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases — by a lot — has been slow to make solid promises on its future. China, which accounts for more than a quarter of the global total, has pledged to peak its emissions by 2030, while most other major emitters (non-Trump administration edition) have promised to lower them in that timeframe and beyond. But the country’s incredible rollout of renewable energy may be moving up the timeline: an analysis of China’s first-quarter emissions suggest, with caveats, that it may already be on the emissions downslope.
“For the first time, the growth in China’s clean power generation has caused the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall despite rapid power demand growth,” read a post from Lauri Myllyvirta, of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, at Carbon Brief on Thursday. The analysis, based in part on China’s official figures, showed a 1.6-percent decline in first-quarter emissions from the same period a year ago; over the past full year, emissions have dropped by one percent.
China’s emissions have dipped before, but only for reasons largely unrelated to their shifting energy systems — like during the pandemic. This time, the underlying mechanism is a clear win:
The speed at which China is building solar and wind power is behind this, and it really is stunning: last year, it accounted for more than half of all the new renewable energy installed. China is on track to have almost 2,500 gigawatts of installed renewables capacity by 2030 — doubling what it had only three years ago. It still has a ways to go, with more than 60 percent of its power still coming from fossil fuels (and it is still, unfortunately, building new coal-fired power plants), but the full-throated embrace of wind and solar power in a country that, well, has some ways to build things faster than elsewhere means a remarkable turnaround could be on the way.
At Carbon Brief, Myllyvirta stressed that the dip in emissions isn’t necessarily a permanent fixture. “With emissions remaining just 1% below the recent peak, it remains possible that they could jump once again to a new record high,” he wrote. “The trend of falling power-sector emissions is likely to continue in 2025. However, the outlook beyond that depends strongly on the clean energy and emissions targets set in China’s next five-year plan, due to be published next year, as well as the economic policy response to the Trump administration’s hostile trade policy.”
One of the most insidious climate change denier talking points has long been that if China doesn’t act then nothing any other country does really matters. This is not true, of course — every ton of CO2 we can keep out of the atmosphere is a win, regardless of its country of origin, and every fraction of a degree shaved off the eventual warming total means less hardship for everyone — but it would be nice if China managed to kill off the claim itself.
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