China’s CO2 emissions have started falling – is this finally the peak?

China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, has seen a slight decline in those emissions over the past twelve months, even as demand for power has gone up. This is an encouraging sign the country’s massive buildout of clean energy has begun to displace fossil fuels – but emissions could still surge again.

That is according to an analysis of China’s economic and energy data by Lauri Myllivirta at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a research organisation in Finland. According to the report, published in Carbon Brief, China’s CO2 emissions have declined by 1 per cent over the past 12 months; in the first quarter of 2025 alone emissions declined by 1.6 per cent relative to last year.

This isn’t the first time China’s CO2 emissions have dipped. For instance, they dropped in 2022 as the economy came to a standstill during covid-19 lockdowns. But this is the first time emissions have fallen even as the country has used more power. “That, of course, means the current fall in emissions has a much better chance of being sustained,” says Myllivirta.

This is mainly a consequence of China’s record build-out of solar, wind and nuclear power, which is beginning to eat into the total electricity generated by burning fossil fuels. Wider economic shifts away from cement and steel production, which are carbon-intensive industries, have also contributed to the decline. Another factor is the jump in the share of people driving electric vehicles, which has cut into the demand for oil.

If China maintains these trends, its carbon emissions could continue to fall. A sustained drop would indicate the country has passed peak emissions, putting it several years ahead of its 2030 target. The achievement would represent a substantial physical and psychological milestone for efforts to tackle climate change, says Myllivirta.

“If and when China’s leaders conclude that they’ve actually got a grip on the problem, and they’ve started to bring down emissions, that will enable China to be a much more forceful and much more positive player in international climate policy, and encourage others to move in the same direction as well,” he says.

However, a number of factors could push China’s emissions back up. In the short term, a hot summer could raise demand for electricity-hungry air conditioning. As in 2022 and 2023, drought could reduce hydropower plants’ ability to generate electricity, forcing coal and gas power plants to make up the difference, says David Fishman at the Lantau Group, a consultancy in Hong Kong.

And the Trump administration’s tariffs, which will have as-yet-unknown effects, have made forecasts of China’s emissions even more “wobbly”, says Myllivirta.

In the longer term, to keep up with demand, China will also need to build hundreds of gigawatts per year of new clean power generation. Whether the country hits that mark will depend on the targets China’s government sets in its next five-year plan, due in 2026, and the pledges it makes under the Paris agreement ahead of this year’s COP30 summit.

“The fate of the global climate doesn’t ride upon what happens in China this summer, but it does to a large part ride on what happens to China’s emissions over the next years and over the next decade,” says Myllivirta.