China has been installing renewable energy at a spectacular rate, and it now has more renewable capacity than the next 13 countries combined and four times that of its closest competitor, the US. So far, though, that hasn’t been enough to offset the rise of fossil fuel use in that country. But a new analysis by the NGO Carbon Brief suggests that things may be changing, as China’s emissions have now dropped over the past year, showing a 1 percent decline compared to the previous March. The decline is largely being led by the power sector, where growth in renewables has surged above rising demand.
This isn’t the first time that China’s emissions have gone down over the course of a year, but in all previous cases the cause was primarily economic—driven by things like the COVID pandemic or the 2008 housing crisis. The shift was driven largely by the country’s energy sector, which saw a 2 percent decline in emissions over the past year.
Credit:
Carbon Brief
Carbon Brief put the report together using data from several official government sources, including the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the National Energy Administration of China, and the China Electricity Council. Projections for future growth come from the China Wind Energy Association and the China Photovoltaic Industry Association.
The data indicates that the most recent monthly peak in emissions was March of 2024. Since then, total emissions have gone down by 1 percent—a change the report notes is small enough that it could easily reverse should conditions change. The report notes, however, that the impact of renewables appears to be accelerating. The growth of clean power in the first quarter of 2025 was enough to drive a 1.6 percent drop compared to the same quarter a year before, outpacing the overall average of a 1 percent decline.