The rumours were true: China’s greenhouse gas emissions are falling

It began last year with some optimistic projections. Climate scientists studying emissions data from China detected a positive signal.

There were signs that the world’s single largest climate polluter might have halted the growth of its greenhouse emissions. Perhaps it had even begun to drive them down.

A solar power station on the outskirts of Golmud, Qinghai province.Credit: Getty

If this was true, it was a remarkable achievement. China had not been expected to meet this goal until 2030.

This is a sign of hope, says Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and senior fellow at Asia Society Policy Institute.

Myllyvirta detected the trend in 2023 and reported it in an analysis for Carbon Brief, a British publication specialising in climate change science and policy.

But the data back then was not yet clear. China’s emissions may have peaked, or may have been about to.

Now the evidence is in.

China’s emissions were down 1.6 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 and by 1 per cent in the latest 12 months, according to Myllyvirta’s analysis of new economic and climate data.

China’s rapid deployment of electricity supply from new wind and solar infrastructure as well as hydro and nuclear, alongside its efforts to electrify its economy – particularly through the rapid roll-out of electric vehicles – has displaced coal and oil use and thereby cut emissions.

Crucially, it had done so as its energy demand increased. This is what makes the data so remarkable.

Over recent years, the world – and China in particular – has deployed renewable energy technology far faster than expected.

This was always good news. The problem has always been that demand for electricity kept growing faster than the supply of new renewables, so while there was more clean energy in global systems, emissions kept growing.

Myllyvirta’s new analysis, first published in Carbon Brief earlier this month, shows that China has finally broken this terrible nexus: emissions in China are finally falling as its use of electricity grows.

“Being able to cut emissions while power demand not just grew but grew above the historical average is certainly a historic milestone, showing the scale that clean energy additions have reached in China,” Myllyvirta told this masthead on Tuesday.

And what happens in China affects us all.

“Needless to say, if the fall in emissions is sustained, that constitutes a major breakthrough for the global energy transition and the global climate effort, as China has been responsible for all of the net increase in CO₂ emissions since the Paris climate conference, so an emission peak in China would highly likely enable global emissions to peak and decline,” Myllyvirta said.

“Whether the falling trend in China’s emissions continues depends strongly on the clean energy targets in China’s upcoming Paris climate commitments and five-year plan; if the current rate of clean energy additions is continued, it is very likely that it will.”

So far, the indications for this are good, at least politically.

Though China’s “all of the above” energy policy includes new coal plants as well as clean power, the clean is outweighing the dirty. Those new coal plants are not only displacing older ones, they are running under capacity.

And China remains determined to achieve energy independence at pace – which means generating energy domestically to cut its dependence on imports of oil, gas and coal.

Energy analyst Tim Buckley notes that China is acting in self-interest here. As it expands its regional hegemony, China is determined both to free itself of coal, oil and gas imported via potentially vulnerable shipping lanes, and to dominate the technologies of the future.

It is also worth noting that the slight dip in emissions may be a signal of a plateau in emissions rather than an ongoing decline, Buckley says.

This means that even as the Trump administration goes about unpicking former president Joe Biden’s subsidies for green energy deployment to support the American shale oil industry, China is pushing harder on new clean tech.

A speech made by Chinese President Xi Jinping last month also caught the attention of climate analysts and diplomats.

China must accelerate the transition to clean energy, he said.

“Clear waters and green mountains are just as valuable as gold and silver. Green transformation is not only the essential way to address climate change, but also a new engine for economic and social development.”

Striking a determinedly different tone from the Trump administration, he added, “We must deepen international co-operation. Solidarity and co-operation are needed more than ever as the world faces multiple, compounded challenges. We should rise above estrangement and conflict with openness and inclusiveness.”

But the key news in a colourful speech was buried in some of its most drab language.

Xi said that in coming months China would announce a new emissions reduction target for 2035 that would cover “all economic sectors and all greenhouse gases”. This is significant because in the past China has committed to reducing greenhouse pollution only relating to electricity production.

China will increase its climate ambition across its economy, even as it beats its own climate targets. This is a good sign for crucial global climate talks to be held in Brazil later this year, before which other nations, including Australia, are expected to announce strong new 2035 targets.

“What’s already clear is that China’s recipe for peaking and reducing emissions is a combination of rapid electrification – not just in transportation but also in industry and buildings – with very large-scale additions of clean energy,” Myllyvirta says.

‘Clear waters and green mountains are just as valuable as gold and silver.’

Xi Jinping

“The recent milestone of clean power generation overtaking power demand growth shows that the country has the capacity to keep reducing emissions from now on rather than waiting for late in the decade to peak.”

The problem we face is that all this is happening too late to avert the impact of climate change. Over recent months it has become clear that the world is already about 1.5 degrees warmer than it was when we started burning coal with the industrial revolution.

Temperatures are rising far faster than predicted, and the impacts of warming are biting harder.

The US might be putting its own future economy at risk by betting on ongoing oil sales and giving up on the clean energy race, says Australian climate scientist Bill Hare, but we are all worse off for Trump’s abandonment of the Paris Agreement.

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