How China may save us all: Xi Jinping’s power play to end emissions

China’s carbon output dipped last year even as energy use rose. Now there’s hope it signals a permanent switch that shows a different kind of power is possible – and ends the ‘but China’ argument by countries seeking to justify climate inaction.

Chinese emissions appear to have peaked around now – exactly as President Xi Jinping promised. Picture-illustration: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images/The Times

China’s emissions fell last year as its energy use rose, but new coal plants cloud the picture

In the year to March 2024, China emitted a staggering amount of carbon. Twelve billion tonnes. It was more than the rest of Asia combined. Twice that of the United States. Just slightly less than Britain belched out through the entire reign of Queen Victoria.

In the year that followed, China also released a staggering amount of carbon. The total was easily equivalent to a coal power plant running continuously since the Norman conquest. But that year’s staggering amount was in one very crucial aspect unexpected: it was, just, smaller than 2023’s staggering amount.

This may end up being the most staggering statistic of the year. Because for the first time, analysis suggests, China’s energy use has increased but its carbon emissions have not.

“We are seeing the beginning of a decoupling,” said Ma Jun, from the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a non-profit Chinese research organisation. “The deployment of solar is massive.”

Ever since much of the world pledged to aim for net-zero carbon emissions, ever since the economies of Europe set out to do something unprecedented in the history of humanity - move from a dense and easy source of energy to a diffuse, difficult and variable source – there has been a niggling argument facing environmentalists.

What is the point of doing this, sceptics ask, when China is adding more emissions in a year than entire continents? What can Britain do, when China’s carbon footprint is 30 times as big and getting bigger?

Solar power station in Wuhu, Anhui province. Picture: Xiao Benxiang/VCG/Getty Images

Now, though, it is not getting bigger. This is, as one environmentalist put it, the end of the “But China” argument.

Is it, though? “There are lots of environmentalists saying, ‘I told you so’, ” Sir Dieter Helm, a professor of economics at Oxford University, said. “’It’s all working,’ they say. ‘Isn’t it wonderful the Chinese have turned the tide, and are building all these renewables and are going to peak their emissions?’”

Indeed it is, he added, compared with the alternative – but we should also look closely at what is going to happen to the many dozens of coal plants the Chinese are still building.

“If China’s emissions plateau at the current level, that’s a climate disaster. That’s not a great success. That is horrendous.”

In terms of emissions per capita, China is still behind than the US, but comfortably exceeds the EU and the UK.

Which narrative is true?

There are two narratives about China and net zero. For the first, go to the Northern Shaanxi Mine. There, in China’s biggest coalmine, a mountain’s worth of carbon has been pulled out of a scarred, dusty, black hellscape. It is still being pulled out.

Last year, China started construction of 94 gigawatts of coal-fuelled power plants. To put that in scale, it is enough to power Britain’s grid twice over.

In this first narrative, while the West frets about wind turbines and veganism, trucks the size of houses shift dirty fuel for a superpower still going all-in on coal.

A worker inside a tunnel at Xiaobaodang coalmine in Shaanxi province. Picture: Getty Images

For the second narrative, go to the Kubuqi desert of Inner Mongolia, China. There, across an area the size of New York, all you can see is solar panels. They sit, silent, turning sunshine on worthless ground into valuable clean energy to be sent south. Last year, China had 500GW of wind and solar projects under construction.

As the West argues about the cost of renewables, in this narrative China is building more than the rest of the world combined. It is monopolising silicon and lithium. It is electrifying everything it can electrify. Cars. Industry. Trains. It is winning the next great industrial revolution to become the world’s first electrostate.

Which narrative is true? Both. China is indeed building a coal station a week, give or take. But its biggest bet by far is on renewables.

Smog lingers over Beijing. Picture: Diego Azubel/EPA/Corbis/The Times

The proximal reason its emissions are falling, despite coal capacity going up, is because of something else entirely. Construction is falling too. A real estate crash means less carbon- intensive cement is being poured into the foundations of apartment blocks.

However, there is hope this is more than a blip. Ma said it would be wrong to view the coal plants as a traditional part of the grid.

China is going through a difficult, but crucial, transition,” he said. “How we adapt to a high penetration of renewable energy is a new challenge.”

As Britain knows, when it is cloudy and the wind does not blow you need a backup. Batteries and other storage are not ready at scale yet. This is why, in the UK, we still have so many gas plants – which a lot of the time sit unused.

“So, yes, there are more coal plants, but we can see quite rapid reduction of coal generation hours,” Ma said. “We are paying a high price for energy security – building all this redundancy.”

Can we believe the statistics about those generation levels, and emissions in general? They are compiled from official sources by Lauri Myllyvirta, from Finland’s Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

A photovoltaic power station in the Kubuqi Desert in the Inner Mongolia region of China. Picture: Feng Li/Getty Images

Rich Collett-White, from Carbon Tracker Initiative, a think tank that analyses the energy transition, said that although there were always questions about how far Chinese statistics could be trusted, he and other analysts thought the trajectory made sense.

“A lot of the data that’s out there is based on customs, and tracking commodity flows,” he said.

“That’s fairly straightforward to verify, and I think would be quite difficult to fake.”

The trend also fits with policy. That Chinese emissions would peak around now should not be a surprise – it is exactly what President Xi promised.

China pledged to start reducing its emissions before 2030 and reach net zero by 2060. Some observers expect Xi to announce a new target for 2035 at the United Nations general assembly in September.

Residents wear protective masks. Picture: Ng Han Guan/AP

High levels of pollution in Beijing. Picture: Borg Wong/AP

Richard Folland, also from Carbon Tracker, said that we often ignored this in the UK debates, adding: “The approach the Chinese government take on targets is that they tend to underpromise and overdeliver.”

For him, being five years ahead of schedule makes sense. “It is important. It is a pivotal moment when China starts bending that curve downwards.”

Is this job done, then? Globally, Helm said, the situation is dire. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere – ultimately the only statistic that matters, and the only one you can absolutely trust – keeps going up. But, he conceded, “this is better than if China was going the other way”.

For Ma, there is a message too to the rest of the world. He said: “Now is a very important moment. We hope there will be recognition that actions are being made in China.”

If, sometimes, the rest of the world had used the supposed Chinese inaction as an argument for their own inaction, he said, the reverse would not be true.

A Fuxing bullet train, among the world’s fastest conventional high-speed trains, arrives in northern China’s Tianjin municipality. Picture: Yang Baosen/AP

He added: “We will keep on doing this by ourselves. But if there’s a chance to work together, with those who care about this issue, hopefully we can.”

Change will not be fast. Over the next year, China will again emit a staggering amount of carbon. Of every three carbon dioxide molecules put into the atmosphere, one will be Chinese.

There is, critics point out, enough coal power being built that would mean this statistic could remain unchanged.

But there is another China, too. In the deserts of Inner Mongolia, endless solar farms catch the light. Stand on the shoreline of the Yellow Sea, and the sunrise that once scattered red in the air pollution glows red on the spinning blades of turbines.

It is the biggest bet by far that a different kind of power is possible, and carries with it a riposte in steel and silicon to the argument, “But China”.

The Times