China’s carbon curve may be bending at last

It’s being hailed as “the biggest and most consequential climate story in the world right now,” by people in the know: after decades of soaring climate pollution, China may have cut carbon emissions last year.

Even more encouragingly, Chinese emissions have been “flat or falling” for almost two years. And carbon pollution appears to have dropped in 2025 even though the country used more energy overall and electricity demand kept growing. China’s gargantuan build-out of clean energy covered the increase and began eating into fossil fuels.

It needs to be said that the latest estimates show last year’s drop in China was very modest. The analysis was conducted by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air for Carbon Brief and it concludes that emissions dropped one per cent in the final quarter of 2025 and less than a full per cent for the year as a whole. But it continues the “flat or falling” pattern that began in 2024 and now extends for 21 months.

Even more inconvenient for those climate trolls: US emissions went up last year; Canada’s emissions have, at best, flatlined and momentum is shifting the wrong way (embarrassingly, we don’t have data for 2025 so the most recent figures we have are estimates for 2024).

The China story is remarkable. It has been deploying more renewables and battery storage than the rest of the world combined. Carbon dioxide emissions went down in almost all the big sectors last year, including transportation — where electric vehicles are taking over — and power generation, which has been China’s largest source of climate pollution. Solar power output went up by a whopping 43 per cent year-on-year, while coal generation declined slightly.

So, we arrive at the inevitable question: has climate pollution peaked from the world’s biggest emitter? Here comes the first caveat: it is, frankly, just too soon to say. That’s the kind of call you can only make in retrospect, with more than a couple of years of evidence showing emissions haven’t rebounded. But we do know that it’s the first annual decline since China’s COVID lockdowns. 

And it’s the first time that China met all its growth in demand using carbon-free sources. It also added enough energy storage to cover the periods of peak demand, which is often what drives the buildout of new power stations that burn fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. 

It is one of the twisted ironies of the climate era that planners and politicians need to be confident they can keep the power on when a heat wave spikes demand for air conditioning. China added 75 GW of batteries and pumped hydro, which gives it “the ability to meet rising peak loads without adding coal and gas-fired power,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

President Xi Jinping has only formally committed that China will hit peak emissions by 2030. And, despite the massive deployment of renewables, the country is still pursuing an “all of the above” approach to energy policy, says Myllyvirta. 

But there was another important insight into China’s infamous coal plants released in the past week. You’ll have heard the criticism about the ongoing building of coal plants, but you hear a lot less about how much they get used. 

While coal plants have historically been kept blazing along as 24-7 “baseload” power, that’s no longer the case. The newer plants are increasingly used as back up for solar, wind and batteries. And China is on track to retrofit almost all of its existing coal power fleet for flexible operation within two years, according to the think tank Ember. “The function of coal is undergoing structural change,” say the analysts. “In 2024, China’s wind and solar installed capacity surpassed that of coal, intensifying the need for flexibility resources capable of responding to variable generation.”

So, it seems possible that China could reach peak carbon emissions sooner than Beijing had planned. We will get a better sense of the intended trajectory in March, when Chinese officials release the country’s next five-year plan. 

Estimating the precise moment of peaking is beside the point, says Myllyvirta. “Whether emissions increase or decrease by a fraction of a percent year-on-year only has symbolic significance,” he told AFP News. “The really significant implication is that emissions aren’t rising rapidly like they did until 2023.” 

But, as Myllyvirta rightly underscores: “they’re also not falling the way that they need to for China to start making progress towards the carbon neutrality target.”

And that leads to a more fundamental caution about news of peaks and plateaus. Even if emissions have peaked or soon do so, the interplay between climate pollution and climate change is much more devilish than most people have grasped. The carbon we add keeps accumulating forever (on timescales relevant to humans, at least). The crux of the problem is that invisible blanket of heat-trapping pollution that keeps thickening. 

The physics creates dynamics that are counterintuitive to our primate brains. A peak in emissions doesn’t mean a peak in global heating. Nor does a reduction in emissions mean a reduction in climate impacts. The hard truth is that climate change keeps getting worse until climate pollution is cut to zero. 

In that sense, a peak is just a milestone on a rocky, uncertain path. It may “only” be a symbolic milestone, but it could be a consequential one — there’s certainly no way to a destination if you’re headed in the opposite direction.