For the first time in modern history, China has held its carbon dioxide emissions flat or declining for nearly two full years — not because the economy slowed down, but because clean energy grew fast enough to meet rising demand. New analysis published by Carbon Brief confirms that China’s CO2 emissions fell an estimated 0.3% in 2025 C.E., extending a trend that began in March 2024 C.E. and has now lasted 21 months.
At a glance
- China CO2 emissions: Total emissions fell an estimated 0.3% in 2025 C.E., with fossil-fuel emissions up just 0.1% — more than offset by a 7% drop in emissions from cement production.
- Clean energy growth: Solar power generation rose 43% and wind rose 14% in 2025 C.E., together delivering roughly 490 terawatt hours of additional electricity — enough to absorb virtually all of the year’s growth in demand.
- Energy storage milestone: For the first time ever, China’s new battery storage capacity — up 75 gigawatts in 2025 C.E. — grew faster than peak electricity demand growth, opening a path to meeting demand spikes without new coal or gas plants.
Why this run is different from past slowdowns
China’s emissions have dipped before, but always during periods of economic weakness. What makes the current stretch significant is that it has occurred alongside strong energy demand growth — electricity consumption rose by 520 terawatt hours in 2025 C.E. alone.
In past analyses, Carbon Brief tracked emissions falling only when factories idled or construction stalled. This time, the clean-energy sector simply built fast enough to outrun demand. Solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, and bioenergy together added more than 530 terawatt hours of generation — slightly exceeding the 520-terawatt-hour rise in total demand.
The result: coal-fired power generation fell 1.9% in the power sector year on year, even as the lights stayed on and the economy kept growing.
The sectors leading the shift
The declines are spread across most of China’s major emitting sectors. Power-sector emissions fell 1.5%. Transport emissions dropped 3%. Cement and metals each fell around 7% and 3% respectively — partly reflecting a continued contraction in real estate construction, but also structural changes in material efficiency.
One sector is moving in the opposite direction. The chemicals industry — which uses coal and oil as feedstocks to produce plastics and synthetic fuels — saw CO2 emissions jump 12% in 2025 C.E. Coal consumption in chemicals rose 15% and oil use rose 10%. Although the chemicals sector represents only about 13% of China’s total emissions, its rapid expansion means that without it, total national emissions would have fallen roughly 2% last year instead of 0.3%.
Whether this expansion continues will depend heavily on oil prices. Coal-to-chemicals production is only profitable when coal costs significantly less than crude oil, making it sensitive to global energy markets in ways that wind turbines and solar panels are not.
The battery storage turning point
Perhaps the most structurally important number in the new analysis is the battery storage figure. China added 75 gigawatts of energy storage capacity in 2025 C.E. — more than peak electricity demand grew that year (55 gigawatts), and more than the three-year average annual growth in peak load (72 gigawatts).
This matters because peak demand has been the main justification for continuing to build coal and gas plants. Grid operators need to guarantee supply at the moment of highest demand — historically a hot summer afternoon or a cold winter evening. If batteries can increasingly cover those peaks, the economic case for new fossil-fuel capacity weakens.
China’s National Development and Reform Commission reinforced this in January 2026 C.E., issuing a new policy extending “capacity payments” — previously reserved for coal, gas, and pumped hydro — to battery storage sites. That financial signal should accelerate storage buildout through the rest of the decade.
Still, grid congestion remains a real constraint. Wind and solar capacity utilization fell in 2025 C.E., which almost certainly reflects unreported curtailment — sites being switched off because the grid cannot absorb all the electricity they generate. Resolving transmission bottlenecks would unlock additional clean generation from capacity that already exists.
What the numbers mean for China’s 2030 pledges
Under the Paris Agreement, China committed to peaking CO2 emissions before 2030 C.E. and reducing its carbon intensity — emissions per unit of GDP — by more than 65% from 2005 C.E. levels. Meeting the intensity target, Carbon Brief’s analysis finds, would require holding 2030 emissions at or below 2025 levels.
The gap between current trajectory and that commitment is real. Carbon intensity fell 4.7% in 2025 C.E. and 12% over the full 2020–25 period — well short of the 18% reduction target in China’s 14th five-year plan. Closing the gap by 2030 would require a roughly 23% reduction in carbon intensity over just five years.
The 15th five-year plan, released in March 2026 C.E., will set the terms. Signals from China’s official planning documents suggest coal consumption may be allowed to rise until 2027 before plateauing, with official wind and solar targets set at a share of “around 30%” of generation by 2030 — a figure Carbon Brief calculates would still allow fossil-fuel generation to grow at 3% per year.
The China Electricity Council projected in early 2026 C.E. that solar and wind capacity additions would exceed 300 gigawatts — well above the government’s own target of over 200 gigawatts. The clean-energy industry has consistently outrun its official targets, and that pattern remains one of the more credible reasons for optimism about what China’s actual trajectory will look like.
Whether the plateau holds, or whether a modest rebound pushes emissions above their early-2024 C.E. peak, may come down to how aggressively China’s provinces and state-owned enterprises set their own plans — and whether the chemicals industry’s expansion receives full support in the five-year plan. The outcome is genuinely open.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Carbon Brief
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- Alzheimer’s risk cut in half by drug in landmark prevention trial
- The Good News for Humankind archive on China
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