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Amidst global efforts to curb carbon emissions and combat climate change, a potentially transformative development has emerged.
China, responsible for approximately 30% of global emissions, experienced a decline in emissions over the 12 months leading up to May 2025.
Significantly, this marks the first instance of emissions decreasing despite robust growth in power demand across the Chinese economy. Previous emission reductions have only occurred during economic shocks, such as the Covid-19 pandemic.
Considering China’s substantial role in escalating global emissions in recent years, this development is noteworthy.
“The world would have stabilised its emissions 10 years ago if it weren’t for China,” Lauri Myllyvirta, of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, told the BBC.
Myllyvirta’s research indicates a 1.6% decrease in China’s emissions compared to the same period last year.
The urgency for China, and all nations, to reduce emissions is paramount.
According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), merely stabilising annual emissions is insufficient to limit global warming to below 1.5C. Exceeding this temperature threshold could result in catastrophic consequences worldwide.
Instead, global annual emissions must decrease to avert the most severe impacts of climate change.
What factors contributed to China’s emission reduction?
Is this a sustainable trend or a temporary fluctuation?
The emission decrease is largely attributed to nationwide investments in wind and solar energy.
According to Myllyvirta, China has installed over half of the global solar and wind generation capacity in recent years.
“The solar capacity that China installed last year is comparable to what the EU has overall,” he said. “It’s a staggering pace of growth.”
Data from the UK-based energy think tank, Ember, reveals that wind and solar energy combined generated over a quarter of China’s electricity for the first time in April.
Meanwhile, electricity generated from fossil fuels during the first four months of 2025 decreased by 3.6% compared to the same period last year.
These are significant shifts for an economy historically reliant on coal, according to Ember energy analyst Yang Biqing.
Yang notes that coal will likely remain important for some time, as renewable sources alone cannot provide a constant, stable electricity supply.
China is not only installing renewable energy technologies but also manufacturing them.
Chinese companies are global leaders in green technology production, including wind turbines and solar panels, accounting for approximately 60% and 80% of global output, respectively.
These companies and their global competitors are engaged in a global race for transition minerals.
The rapid expansion of these industries, with their demand for mines and processing plants, has caused severe social and environmental damage in affected areas.
Recent findings by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, a non-profit, indicate that the rush to mine these minerals is also contributing to human rights abuses and environmental destruction.
Nonetheless, experts interviewed by the BBC agreed that China’s ability to deploy these technologies at scale has significantly impacted its carbon emissions.
Despite its record pace of renewable energy installation, China’s energy mix remains comparable to many Western economies.
In the UK, for example, renewables account for 46.3% of all energy generated. The US, second to China in carbon emissions, generates just over 20% of its energy from renewables.
Many developed economies, once leading emitters, began reducing their emissions long ago, transitioning away from coal and energy-intensive manufacturing.
China has long argued that it was following the path paved by wealthier countries, whose economic growth was accompanied by rising emissions. India’s emissions have also surged in recent years as its economy has grown.
Average emissions per person in both China and India are significantly lower than in the US, although China’s per capita emissions now exceed those of the UK and EU and are similar to those of Japan.
While emissions have recently stabilised, a sustained drop is not guaranteed.
“You could plateau at that level for a long time, and that’s not a very helpful thing for climate action,” says Li Shuo, of the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI).
Li warns that external factors could push Beijing back towards coal. The Ukraine war, for example, strengthened Chinese leaders’ resolve to secure energy supplies.
However, the drive for energy security may actually steer them towards renewables, according to Christoph Nedopil Wang, director of the Griffith Asia Institute in Australia.
He argues that China’s “dominance” in the renewable energy sector means that relying more on renewables and less on energy imports “improves national security for China.”
Current trade tensions with the West and China’s sluggish economy are also unlikely to lead Beijing to stimulate its economy in ways that would cause a renewed surge in carbon emissions, Dr Nedopil Wang adds.
Policymakers are investing in low-emission sectors such as IT, biotech, electric vehicles, and clean energy technologies, which are more likely to grow, he predicts.
However, China still has progress to make in meeting its key international climate commitment.
Under the Paris Agreement framework, China has committed to reducing its carbon intensity by more than 65% from 2005 levels by 2030. Carbon intensity measures the amount of carbon emitted per unit of GDP.
To achieve this long-term goal, China set an interim target of cutting carbon intensity by 18% between 2020 and 2025. However, progress was disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and only a 7.9% reduction was achieved by the end of 2024.
As a result, China’s only hope of meeting the 2030 target is to reduce emissions in absolute terms between now and 2030, according to Myllyvirta. The identified reduction is a start, he adds, but ambitious goal-setting and policy implementation are necessary.
Beijing may also adopt a more proactive role in global climate policy, Dr Nedopil Wang says: “That would be a big shift from 10 years ago, even six years ago, when China’s position was very much that ‘We’re a developing country and we hold back’.”
Such a shift is more likely now, as Beijing seeks to capitalise on the Trump administration’s opposition to climate action and establish itself as a leader on the issue.
At a climate conference in April, President Xi Jinping told world leaders: “Instead of talking the talk, we must walk the walk… we must turn our goals into tangible results.”
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