The UK’s Climate Change Act is a landmark piece of legislation that guides the nation’s response to global warming and has proved highly influential around the world.
Increasingly, the law has come under attack from right-wing politicians, who want to scrap the UK’s net-zero target and the policies supporting it.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has announced that her party would “repeal” the Climate Change Act entirely, if her party is able to form the next government.
The opposition leader said she still believed that “climate change is real”, but offered no replacement for the legislation that the Conservatives have backed since its inception.
Her proposal drew intense criticism from scientists, business leaders and even senior Conservatives, who argued that abandoning the act would harm the UK economy and drive more climate extremes.
Meanwhile, the hard-right populist Reform UK party – which is currently leading in the polls – has also rejected climate action and promised to “ditch net-zero”.
Below, Carbon Brief explains what the Climate Change Act does – and does not – mean for the UK, correcting inaccurate comments as the UK’s political right veers further away from the previous consensus on climate action.
- Why does the UK have the Climate Change Act?
- What does the Climate Change Act require?
- The costs and benefits of the Climate Change Act
- How nearly 70 countries followed the UK’s Climate Change Act
- What comes next under the Climate Change Act?
- What would happen if the Climate Change Act was repealed?
Why does the UK have the Climate Change Act?
It is well-known that the Climate Change Act was voted through the UK parliament with near-unanimous cross-party support. In October 2008, some 465 MPs voted in favour, including 263 Labour members, 131 Conservatives, 52 Liberal Democrats. Just five Conservatives voted against.
Less widely appreciated is the fact that the Labour government only agreed to legislate in the face of huge public and political pressure, including from then-Conservative leader David Cameron.
Jill Rutter, senior fellow at thinktank the Institute for Government (IfG), tells Carbon Brief that the Conservatives “can also claim significant credit for the Climate Change Act”.
This is at odds with comments made by Badenoch, who described it as “Labour’s law”, when pledging to repeal it if she were ever elected as prime minister.
In early 2005, two Friends of the Earth campaigners – Bryony Worthington and Martyn Williams – had drafted a Climate Change Bill, inspired by the “worsening problem of climate change and the inadequacy of the government’s policy response”, according to a 2018 academic paper.
Worthington tells Carbon Brief they had “decided [the government’s plan] was rubbish and we needed a different approach”, based on five-yearly carbon budgets rather than single-year goals.
Their draft was introduced into parliament that July, as a private members’ bill, by high-profile backbench MPs from the three main political parties: Labour’s Michael Meacher; the Conservatives’ John Gummer (now Lord Deben); and Norman Baker for the Liberal Democrats.
This was the centrepiece of Friends of the Earth’s “Big Ask” campaign, gaining huge public support and backing from more than 100 other NGOs, 412 MPs and celebrities such as Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.
Then, in December 2005, Cameron was elected Conservative leader, using support for climate action as part of his efforts to “‘decontaminate’ the Tory brand”, according to an IfG retrospective.
With the Labour government still resisting the idea of new climate change legislation, Cameron made what the IfG called a “really significant political intervention” on 1 September 2006, throwing his weight behind the “Big Ask” and publishing his own draft bill, on green recycled paper.
Credit: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo
As the Guardian reported at the time, a letter from Cameron and others “call[ed] on the government to enshrine annual targets for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into a bill, to be introduced in the next Queen’s speech…the government believes a bill is unnecessary”.
At prime minister’s questions on 25 October 2006, Cameron continued to press Labour prime minister Tony Blair, who was still not committed to legislation.
Cameron went beyond the “Big Ask” draft by calling for an independent commission with executive powers, able to adjust the UK’s climate goals. Cameron asked Blair:
“Are we getting a bill: yes or no?…Will it include the two things that really matter: annual targets and an independent body that can measure and adjust them in the light of circumstances?”
The IfG says a former aide to David Miliband, who was then environment secretary, “remembers him commenting that Labour could not get into the position of being the only major party not in favour of the proposed bill”.
Finally, in November 2006, the Labour government confirmed in the Queen’s speech that it would introduce a new climate change bill.
Emphasising the cross-party consensus, Lord Deben tells Carbon Brief: “It was the Tories who wrote it and it was the Labour Party who accepted it – and all parties supported it.” He adds:
“It’s not just that every Tory leader since [then] has supported climate change, the Climate Change Act [and the] Climate Change Committee, but it’s simply that, actually, they ought to, because they invented it.”
The Labour government published its own draft climate change bill in March 2007 and this, after lengthy negotiation, went on to become the 2008 act.
Cameron continued to campaign for “independent experts, not partisan…ministers” to set the UK’s statutory climate targets, but this responsibility was, ultimately, left to the government.
Rutter tells Carbon Brief that, in pledging to repeal the 2008 act, Badenoch is “rejecting” a Conservative “inheritance” on climate change that runs back to Margaret Thatcher. She says:
“One of the defining features of climate policy to date in the UK has been the political consensus that has underpinned it. That may have been because Margaret Thatcher was the first leading world politician to draw attention to climate change in 1989 [via a speech at the UN in New York].”
Rutter adds that David Miliband had only been able to convince then-chancellor Gordon Brown to accept legally binding targets as a result of Cameron’s enthusiasm for the cause. She says:
“Although it was Labour legislation, brought forward by David Miliband (though implemented by brother Ed), the reason Miliband was…able to convince a sceptical Gordon Brown at the Treasury that the UK should set legally binding targets, was the enthusiasm with which new Conservative leader David Cameron embraced the Friends of the Earth ‘Big Ask’ campaign as part of his moves to detoxify the Conservative party after its 2005 defeat. Theresa May then increased the target [in 2019] from 80% to net-zero as part of her legacy. It is that long Conservative inheritance on climate action that Badenoch is now rejecting.”
What does the Climate Change Act require?
The Climate Change Act sets out an overall “framework” for both cutting the UK’s emissions and preparing the country for the impacts of climate change.
At its heart is a legally binding goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Originally envisaged as a 60% reduction on 1990 levels, this was quickly increased to 80%.
In 2019, amid a surge in concern about climate change, the then-Conservative government strengthened the target again to a reduction to “at least 100%” below 1990 levels, more commonly referred to as net-zero.
![The target for 2050: (1) It is the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that the net UK carbon account for the year 2050 is at least [F1100%] lower than the 1990 baseline. (2)“The 1990 baseline” means the aggregate amount of— (a)net UK emissions of carbon dioxide for that year, and (b)net UK emissions of each of the other targeted greenhouse gases for the year that is the base year for that gas.](https://breakingclimatechange.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/cca-rag-scaled-11.webp)
On the pathway to this long-term goal, the act also requires the government to set legally binding interim targets known as ”carbon budgets”. These must be set 12 years in advance, to allow time for the government and the rest of the economy to plan ahead.
The carbon budgets set limits on emissions over five-year periods, providing greater flexibility than annual goals, while tackling the cumulative emissions that determine global warming.
Section 13 of the act specifies that the government has a “duty to prepare proposals and policies for meeting carbon budgets”. There is also a requirement for the government to explain how its actions will achieve its climate goals.
(In addition, the act requires the government to set out a programme of measures for climate adaptation and how it intends to meet them.)
The final key pillar of the act is the creation of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent advisory body. The CCC advises – but does not decide – on the level at which carbon budgets should be set and the climate-related risks facing the UK.
The committee also produces annual assessments of “progress” and recommendations for going further, which the government is obliged to respond to, but not to accept.
Each time the secretary of state sets out their plan for a new carbon budget – taking the CCC’s advice into account – or responds to a progress report from the committee, parliament scrutinises the government’s activities.
Contrary to recent criticisms from the opposition Conservatives and the hard-right populist Reform UK, however, the act says nothing at all about how the government should meet its targets.
The only requirement is that the government’s plan should be capable of meeting its targets.
Moreover, it was the Conservatives under Cameron that had wanted to give the CCC executive and target-setting powers. This was opposed at the time by the then-Labour government.
Rachel Solomon Williams, executive director of the Aldersgate Group, notes on LinkedIn that this was a “closely debated” issue, but that, ultimately, the act puts the government “in control”:
“A closely debated aspect of the bill at the time was whether the CCC should have an executive or an advisory function. In the end, it was appointed as an expert advisory committee and the government remains entirely in control of delivery choices.”
The Conservative press release announcing Badenoch’s plan to “repeal” the act is, therefore, incorrect to state that the legislation “force[s]” governments to introduce specific policies.
(Speaking at the 2025 Conservative party conference, shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho caricatured what she called “Ed Miliband’s…act” as requiring “1970s”-style “central planning” that “dictate[s] what products people must buy, and when”.
Just 18 months earlier, she, as energy secretary, had written of her “government’s unwavering commitment to meeting our ambitious emissions targets, including the legislated carbon budgets and the net-zero by 2050 target”.)
The press release also falsely describes the targets set under the act as “arbitrary” and falsely suggests they were set without consideration for the impact on jobs, households and the economy.
(In 2021, Badenoch herself, then a government minister, told parliament: “We will put affordability and fairness at the heart of our reforms to reach net-zero.”)
Specifically, section 10 of the act lists “matters to be taken into account” when setting carbon budgets, including the latest climate science, available technologies, “economic circumstances”, “fiscal circumstances” and the impact of any decisions on fuel poverty.
As for the net-zero target, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that reducing emissions to net-zero is the only way to stop global warming. The target was set on this basis, following detailed advice from the CCC that took climate science, economic and social factors into account.
The Conservatives have also taken aim at the CCC itself as part of their rejection of the Climate Change Act, highlighting the committee’s advice on meat consumption and flying.
In an echo of widely circulated conspiracy theories, Badenoch even told the Spectator that the CCC “wants us to eat insects”. This is not true.
Despite the framing by right-leaning media and politicians, the CCC’s recommendations for contentious topics such as meat consumption and reductions in flight numbers are modest.
The committee notes that “meat consumption has been falling” without policy interventions and says this will help to free up land for tree-planting. It says “demand management measures” to curb flight numbers “may” be needed, but only if other efforts to decarbonise aviation fail.
More importantly, the government decides how to meet the carbon budgets. It can – and often does – ignore recommendations from the CCC, including those on diets and airport expansion.
The costs and benefits of the Climate Change Act
The debate over whether to tackle climate change, how quickly and to what extent has almost invariably centred on the costs and benefits of doing so.
Those opposed to climate action have, in general, sought to exaggerate the supposed costs, while playing down the losses and damages already being caused by global warming.
Yet serious efforts to weigh up the costs and the benefits have concluded – again and again and again – that it would be cheaper to cut emissions than to face the consequences of inaction.
Indeed, this was precisely the conclusion of the landmark 2006 Stern Review, to which the 2008 Climate Change Act partly owes its existence. The review said:
“[T]he evidence gathered by the review leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting.”
More specifically, it said that the cost of action “can be limited to around 1% of global GDP [gross domestic product]”, whereas the damages from climate change would cost 5% – and as much as 20% of GDP.
When the act was passed in 2008, it was again estimated that the UK would need to invest around 1% of GDP in meeting its target of cutting emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.
Since then, estimates of the cost of cutting emissions have fallen, as the decline in low-carbon technology costs has outperformed expectations. At the same time, estimates of the economic losses due to rising temperatures have tended to keep going up.
(Some years after the review’s publication, Stern said he had “got it wrong on climate change – it’s far, far worse…Looking back, I underestimated the risks.”)
When it recommended the target of net-zero by 2050, the CCC estimated that the UK would need to invest 1-2% of GDP to hit this goal. It later revised this down to less than 1% of GDP.
Most recently, the CCC revised its estimates down once again, putting the net cost of reaching net-zero at £116bn over 25 years – roughly £70 per person per year – or just 0.2% of GDP.
In July 2025, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) went on to estimate that the UK could take an 8% hit to its economy by the early 2070s, if the world warms by 3C.
It concluded that while there were potentially significant costs to the government from reaching net-zero, these would be far lower than the costs of failing to limit warming.
Despite all this, Conservative leader Badenoch has falsely argued that the UK’s net-zero target will be “impossible” to meet without “bankrupting” the country and that the the Climate Change Act has “loaded us with costs”.
Her party has also pledged to “axe the carbon tax” on electricity generation – a significant source of government revenue – claiming that this “just adds extra costs to our bills for no reason”.
Prof Jim Watson, director of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, tells Carbon Brief that the costs of climate policies are “sometimes exaggerated” and are not the main reason for high bills:
“Policies that are in place to meet the UK’s carbon targets have costs, but these costs are sometimes exaggerated. These policies are not the primary cause of the energy price shock businesses and households have experienced over the past three years.”
Watson says that high gas prices were the “main driver” of high bills and adds that shifting away from fossil fuels “will also reduce the UK’s exposure to future fossil-fuel price shocks”.
How nearly 70 countries followed the UK’s Climate Change Act
In the interview announcing her ambition to scrap the Climate Change Act, Badenoch falsely told the Spectator that the UK was “tackl[ing] climate change…alone”. She said:
“We need to do what we can sensibly to tackle climate change, but we cannot do it alone. If other countries aren’t doing it, then us being the goody-two-shoes of the world is not actually encouraging anyone to improve.”
This is a common claim among climate-sceptic politicians and commentators, who argue that the UK has gone further than other nations and that this is unfair. Badenoch’s predecessor, Rishi Sunak, used similar reasoning to justify net-zero policy rollbacks.
The UK has indeed been a leader in passing climate legislation, but it is far from the only country taking action to tackle climate change.
The Climate Change Act was among the first comprehensive national climate laws and the first to include legally binding emissions targets.
It has inspired legislation around the world, with laws in New Zealand, Canada and Nigeria among those explicitly based on the UK model.
Indeed, 69 countries have now passed “framework” climate laws similar to the UK’s Climate Change Act, as the chart below shows. This is up from just four when the act was legislated in 2008. Of these, 14 are explicitly titled the “climate change act”.
The UK was also the first major economy to legislate a net-zero target in 2019, but since then virtually every major emitter in the world has announced the target. (Not all of these targets have been put into law, as the UK’s has.)
When the UK announced its target in June 2019, around 1% of global emissions were covered by net-zero targets. By the end of that year, France and Germany brought this up to nearly 4%.
Over the following years, major economies including China and India announced net-zero targets, meaning that around three-quarters of global emissions are now covered by such goals, as the chart below shows.
(This figure would be even higher if the Trump administration in the US, which accounts for around a tenth of annual global emissions, had not abandoned the nation’s net-zero target.)
While it is true that the UK is “only responsible for 1% of global emissions”, as Badenoch has also noted, this does not mean its actions are inconsequential. Around a third of global emissions come from countries that are each responsible for 1% of global emissions or less.
Moreover, as a relatively wealthy country that is responsible for a large share of historical emissions, many argue that the UK also has a moral responsibility to lead on climate action.
This historical responsibility is implicitly invoked by the Paris Agreement, which recognises countries’ “common but differentiated responsibilities” for current climate change.
Finally, Badenoch’s position diverges from that of recent Conservative leaders.
Theresa May and Boris Johnson spoke positively of the UK “leading the world” in low-carbon technology and expressed pride about the nation’s climate record.
They framed the UK’s success in tackling climate change as a good reason to do more, rather than less. “Green” Conservatives also argue that the UK should race to gain a competitive advantage in producing low-carbon technologies domestically.
Responding to Badenoch’s plan to scrap the act, May issued a statement criticising the “retrograde step” following nearly two decades of the UK “[leading] the way in tackling climate change”.
What comes next under the Climate Change Act?
The debate over the future of the Climate Change Act, triggered by the Conservative pledge to repeal it, comes ahead of two key moments for the legislation.
First, the government has until the end of October 2025 to publish a new plan for meeting the sixth carbon budget (CB6), covering the five-year period from 2033-2037.
In 2021, the then-Conservative government passed legislation to cut emissions to 78% below 1990 levels during the sixth carbon budget period, centred on 2035. The government set out its “carbon budget delivery plan” for CB6 in October 2021, as part of a wider net-zero strategy.
In July 2022, however, this plan was ruled unlawful by the High Court for failing to publish sufficient details on exactly how the target would be met. The revised plan, published in March 2023, was once again found unlawful by the High Court in May 2024.
The High Court then gave the government a deadline of May 2025 to publish another version, later extended to October 2025 as a result of last year’s general election.
Second, the government has until June 2026 to legislate for the seventh carbon budget, covering the period 2037 to 2042. This legislation will be subject to a vote in parliament.
In February 2025, the CCC advised the government to set this budget at 87% below 1990 levels, in order to stay on track for the goal of net-zero by 2050, as shown in the chart below.
Both the CB6 delivery plan this October and the parliamentary vote over CB7 next June are likely to be hotly contested, with the Conservatives and Reform having come out against climate action.
After publishing two unlawful carbon budget delivery plans and ahead of a widely anticipated election loss, the Conservatives began calling for greater scrutiny around carbon budgets in 2023.
Then-prime minister Rishi Sunak said in September of that year that parliament should be able to debate plans to meet the next carbon budget, before voting on the target. He said:
“So, when parliament votes on carbon budgets in the future, I want to see it consider the plans to meet that budget, at the same time.”
Then-secretary of state Coutinho subsequently wrote that a draft delivery plan for CB7 should be published alongside draft legislation setting the level of the carbon budget. She also argued that CB7 be debated on the floor of the House, rather than in the “delegated legislation committee”.
In response, the current government has pledged to provide “further information” to parliament, ahead of the vote on CB7. In a July 2025 letter to the chair of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC), energy secretary Ed Miliband wrote:
“Prior to parliament’s vote, we will publish an impact assessment which will clearly articulate the full range of benefits and costs of the government’s chosen CB7 target and the cross-economy pathway to deliver it.”
However, Miliband said the government would not publish a CB7 delivery plan until “as soon as reasonably practicable after” the parliamentary vote on the level of the budget.
The EAC itself is holding an inquiry on the seventh carbon budget and how the “costs of delivering it will filter through to households and businesses”. It is likely to report back in February 2026.
What would happen if the Climate Change Act was repealed?
If any future government wanted to repeal the Climate Change Act and its legally binding net-zero goal, it would not be a straightforward process.
The government would need to introduce a new bill in parliament just to repeal the act.
This process would involve seeking approval from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords before receiving Royal Assent to become law. Within the make-up of the current UK parliament, it is likely that such a bill would face significant challenges.
Any new law repealing the Climate Change Act would need to introduce new climate commitments of a similar nature – or else the UK would be in breach of several international laws and treaties, explains Estelle Dehon KC, a barrister specialising in climate change. She tells Carbon Brief:
“In short, repeal of the Climate Change Act without any replacement commitments of a similar type would be in breach of the UK’s international obligations under: the climate change treaties (so UNFCCC, Kyoto and Paris); international human rights law and customary international law, as well as specific sources like UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.”
Under the Paris Agreement, the UK has made pledges to cut its emissions by 2030 and 2035, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs).
The UK’s NDCs are directly informed by its domestic emissions-cutting targets, known as carbon budgets. The act specifies that the government has a “duty to prepare proposals and policies for meeting carbon budgets”.
Any move in breach of international laws and treaties could be vulnerable to legal challenges, particularly in light of a recent opinion on climate change by the International Court of Justice.
Repealing the Climate Change Act could also put the UK in opposition with its international trade agreements.
The most recent trade agreement between the UK and the EU states that each party “reaffirms its ambition of achieving economy-wide climate neutrality by 2050”.
It also contains rules on “non-regression” in relation to climate protection.
The post Factcheck: What the Climate Change Act does – and does not – mean for the UK appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: What the Climate Change Act does – and does not – mean for the UK
China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were unchanged from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2025, extending a flat or falling trend that started in March 2024.
The rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) saw CO2 emissions from transport fuel drop by 5% year-on-year, while there were also declines from cement and steel production.
The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that while emissions from the power sector were flat year-on-year, a big rise in the chemical industry’s CO2 output offset reductions elsewhere.
Other key findings include:
- Power-sector CO2 emissions were flat in the third quarter, even as electricity demand growth accelerated to 6.1%, from 3.7% in the first half of the year.
- This was achieved thanks to electricity generation from solar growing by 46% and wind by 11% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2025.
- In the first nine months of the year, China completed 240 gigawatts (GW) of solar and 61GW of wind capacity, putting it on track for a new renewable record in 2025.
- Oil demand and emissions in the transport sector fell by 5% in the third quarter, but grew elsewhere by 10%, as the production of plastics and other chemicals surged.
After the first three quarters of the year, China’s CO2 emissions in 2025 are now finely balanced between a small fall or rise, depending on what happens in the last quarter.
A drop in the full-year total became much more likely after September, which recorded an approximately 3% drop in emissions year-on-year.
Electricity demand – and associated emissions – have tended to grow fastest during the summer months, due to rapidly rising demand for air conditioning amid hotter summers.
If this pattern repeats, then China’s CO2 emissions will record a fall for the full year of 2025.
While an emission increase or decrease of 1% or less might not make a huge difference in an objective sense, it has heightened symbolic meaning, as China’s policymakers have left room for emissions to increase for several more years, leaving the timing of the peak open.
Either way, China is set to miss its target to cut carbon intensity – the CO2 emissions per unit of GDP – from 2020 to 2025, meaning steeper reductions are needed to hit the county’s 2030 goal.
Finely balanced emissions
China’s CO2 emissions have now been flat or falling for 18 months, starting in March 2024. This trend continued in the third quarter of 2025, when emissions were unchanged year-on-year.
This picture is finely balanced, however, with contrasting trends in different sectors of the economy underlying the ongoing plateau in CO2 emissions, shown in the figure below.
Emissions from the production of cement and other building materials fell by 7% in the third quarter of 2025, while emissions from the metals industry fell 1%. This is due to the ongoing real-estate contraction, as the construction sector uses most of the country’s steel and cement output.
Emission reductions from steel production continued to lag the reductions in output, which fell 3%. This is because the fall in demand was absorbed by the lower-carbon electric-arc steelmakers, whereas carbon-intensive coal-based steel production was less affected.
China has struggled to increase the share of electric-arc steelmaking despite targets, due to the large capacity base and entrenched position of coal-based steelmaking crowding out the lower-emission producers.
Power-sector emissions were unchanged year-on-year in the third quarter, as strong growth from solar and wind generation, along with small increases from nuclear and hydro, nearly matched a rapid rise in demand.
Emissions from transport fell by 5% over the period, but oil consumption in other sectors grew by 10%, driven by chemical industry expansion. This resulted in a 2% rise in oil consumption overall.
Gas demand and emissions grew by 3% overall in the three-month period, with consumption in the power sector up by 9% and by 2% in other sectors.
The figure below shows how emissions in each of these sectors has changed in the first nine months of 2025, for example, power-sector CO2 output is down 2% in the year so far.
The rapid recent growth of CO2 emissions in the chemical industry is a continuation of recent trends and, as such, the sector’s coal and oil use have both surged in 2025 to date.
The outlook for emissions in the final quarter of 2025 – and the year as a whole – depends on whether further declines in cement, transport and power are enough to offset increases elsewhere.
Solar and wind growth keep power sector emissions flat
In the power sector, China’s dominant source of CO2, emissions remained flat in the third quarter even as electricity demand grew strongly.
Electricity generation from solar and wind grew by 30%, with solar up 46% and wind power generation increasing 11%. With small increases from nuclear and hydropower, non-fossil power sources covered almost 90% of the increase in demand, even as demand growth accelerated to 6.1% in the third quarter, up from 3.7% in the first half of the year.
This is illustrated in the figure below, where the columns show the change in generation by each source of non-fossil power every quarter and the line shows the increase in electricity demand.
Despite a small increase in electricity generation from fossil fuels to cover the remaining 10% of demand growth, power sector emissions stayed unchanged in the third quarter of 2025.
This is because the average thermal efficiency of coal power – the amount of fuel per unit of output – improved slightly, while the share of gas-fired generation increased at the expense of coal.
The figure above shows that the growth in clean-power sources has been covering all or nearly all of the rise in electricity demand in recent quarters, but once again there is a fine balance.
As such, the outlook for the final quarter of 2025 and for power-sector emissions over the years ahead depends on the relative strength of rising demand and clean-power output.
From 2021 to 2025, there has been a marked seasonal pattern in electricity demand growth, with more rapid rises in the summer peak “cooling season”, from June to August.
In these months, residential electricity consumption grew by a striking 13% per year, compared with just 6% during other parts of the year. Industry and service-sector consumption also grew faster in the summer months.
As a result, growth in total power demand has been significantly faster, at 6.8% during the summer months, compared with 4.6% in the rest of the year.
This is due to both increased prevalence of air conditioning and to hotter summers, with the average number of “cooling-degree days” increasing by one third from 2015–16 to 2024–25, as shown in the figure below.
This seasonal pattern implies that electricity consumption might ease off in the final quarter of 2025, which would set a lower bar for clean-power growth to meet or exceed rising demand.
On the generation side, the first nine months of 2025 has seen China adding 240GW of solar and 61GW of wind power capacity. While the rate of new installations has slowed down sharply since May, China is still on track for a new record for the whole year as developers rush to complete projects included in the 14th five-year plan, which finishes at the end of 2025.
China had 181GW of wind and 234GW of utility-scale solar under construction in early 2025, according to the Global Energy Monitor. After the capacity additions in the first nine months of 2025, this leaves 120GW of wind and 123GW of utility-scale solar under construction, much of which is likely to be commissioned this year.
The rate of new wind and solar additions in 2025 to date is shown in the figure below, alongside comparable figures for each year since 2020.
The slowdown in installations in recent months is due to a new pricing system that requires developers of new solar and wind-power plants to secure contracts directly with buyers, instead of being guaranteed the benchmark price for coal power, which was the case until May.
The change in pricing led to a major rush to complete projects faster than originally scheduled, seen in the May 2025 bump in the figure above.
This left few projects to complete in the third quarter, meaning that the current slow pace in installations does not yet reflect the capacity growth that can be expected under the new system.
China’s power-sector emissions have been falling slowly since early 2024, due to the rapid growth of solar and wind power generation. The unprecedentedly large capacity additions have enabled non-fossil power generation to cover electricity demand growth, but only barely.
Any sustained slowdown in solar and wind deployment would mean that power-sector emissions would begin to creep up again, unless electricity demand slows sharply. This is not expected – the State Grid has forecast 5.6% annual demand growth until 2030, compared with 6.1% from 2019 to 2025.
One indicator pointing towards robust ongoing solar capacity growth is that the production of solar cells has continued at or above 2024 levels – even after the slowdown in installations in recent months – growing 8% year-on-year in the third quarter.
The amount of new solar-cell capacity produced in Chinese factories each month, minus exports, has tended to predict new domestic solar installations, with a lag.
However, the outlook for wind and solar growth in China is clouded by a large gap between industry and government expectations for the sector.
The China Wind Energy Association is targeting at least 120GW of wind-power capacity added per year in the next five years, while the China Photovoltaic Industry Association projects 235-270GW of solar added in 2026, rising to 280-340GW in 2030.
In contrast, president Xi Jinping recently announced that China would “strive to” bring the county’s installed solar and wind capacity to 3,600GW by 2035. This implies just 200GW of capacity added per year over the next decade, extending a target set earlier for 2025-27.
The pace of solar and wind deployment under the new pricing system depends heavily on the implementation of the national-level rules at the provincial level, particularly the choice of minimum pricing. Most provinces are yet to finalise their rules and only six provinces have published results from auctions for “contracts for difference” – the key policy instrument under the new rules – so far, with nine more auctions underway.
Meanwhile, the additions of new coal and gas-fired power capacity have accelerated, as the projects started after the government loosened permitting and started to promote coal-fired power projects in 2020 are starting to complete.
The result has been that the utilisation of coal-fired power capacity – the share of hours during which each unit is in operation – has begun to fall significantly, as power generation from coal has declined since April 2024. Utilisation peaked at 54% in the 12 months to February 2024 and fell to 51% in the 12 months to September 2025.
Another 230GW of coal-fired power capacity is under construction. If power generation from coal continues to stay stagnant and if all of this new capacity is added to the system, then utilisation would fall to 43%. This could prompt a rethink of the government’s promotion of coal-fired power projects.
Chemical industry’s runaway growth pushes up oil demand
In the oil sector, there are once again competing factors at work. China’s transport oil consumption has been falling since April 2024, driven in large part by the rapid adoption of EVs.
However, total oil consumption still increased 2% in the year to September, as a 4% fall in transport fuel use was more than offset by an 8% rise elsewhere, dominated by industrial demand.
Consumption fell by 4-5% across each of the three main transport fuels: diesel, used in trucks and other heavy vehicles; petrol, mainly used in cars; and jet fuel.
The reduction in petrol consumption accelerated in October, falling 8% year-on-year, erasing the usual spike seen at this time of year related to the week-long national holiday.
Within industry, the production of primary plastics grew 12% year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2025, while the production of chemical fibres grew by 11% and the production of ethylene by 7%. The increase in the output of these products accounts for the entire increase in oil use outside the transportation sector.
These sharp increases in chemical production are shown in the figure below.
One clear driver of the growth in plastics production is import substitution – replacing equivalent products imported from overseas – as well as growing exports.
China is still a net importer of primary plastics by value in 2025 so far, but only just. The value of imports fell by 8% while the value of exports increased by 8% in the first nine months of the year.
The five-year plan for 2021-25 targeted an increase in chemicals production to reduce the imports of key raw materials to less than 40% of demand, with projects launched to meet this target coming online this year.
More recently, the government has encouraged oil refineries to shift from the production of transport fuels to chemicals, in order to adapt to falling demand for oil in transportation. It set a target for the petrochemical and chemical sector’s economic output to grow by more than 5% per year in 2025-26.
The US-China tariff tit-for-tat has added further momentum to import substitution. The US has been China’s largest source of imports of polyethylene – the most widely used plastic in the world – since 2023, but China has expanded its domestic production in response to the trade spat.
Still, the change in China’s net exports of plastics cannot account for more than a fraction of the increase in output volume, however, as estimated based on reported polymer prices. This indicates that growing domestic demand is a major driver of the rapid growth in plastics production.
Packaging is the largest use of plastics in China, with the booming online retail and food delivery industry driving rapid growth.
Express parcel volumes grew 21% in 2024 and 17% through September 2025. The value of the single-use plastic tableware market averaged 21% annual growth from 2017 to 2022 and the revenue of the online food delivery industry is projected to grow 11% in 2025.
The government is taking measures to curb single-use plastics, but these would need to be intensified to fully counteract the growth rates seen in food deliveries and other drivers. The demand for high-performance materials in new manufacturing industries is also a significant driver.
Will China’s emissions peak early or rebound?
After the third quarter of 2025, it is clear that the plateau or slow decline of China’s CO2 emissions that started in early 2024 continues.
Whether emissions increased or decreased marginally in the first three quarters of the year is too close to call, given the uncertainties involved, but a drop in full-year emissions became much more likely after September, which recorded an approximately 3% drop in emissions year-on-year.
Still, either a small increase or decrease in the calendar year of 2025 remains possible and will be ultimately be decided by developments in the fourth quarter.
China’s emissions from fossil-fuel use are highly likely to increase this year, with the increase of coal and oil use in the chemical industry outweighing the reductions in emissions from the power, metals, building materials and transportation sectors. This will be balanced out by a fall in cement process emissions.
What is already clear is that the 2025 carbon-intensity target will be missed, as it would have required absolute emission reductions of 4% or more this year, after slow progress during the earlier years of the five-year period.
This also means that the carbon-intensity target in the next 15th five-year plan for 2026-2030 would need to be more ambitious than the one that China missed during the current period, to close the shortfall to the country’s 2030 intensity target.
China targeted an 18% reduction in 2021-25, but will only have achieved around 12% by the end of this year. It would then need a reduction of around 22-24% in the next five years to achieve its headline climate commitment for 2030, a 65% carbon-intensity reduction on 2005 levels.
Whether emissions fall this year – or not – has high symbolic significance. Having committed to peaking emissions “before 2030”, China’s policymakers have left their specific peaking year open.
China’s new greenhouse gas emission target for 2035, announced by Xi in September, was set as a reduction of 7-10% below an undefined “peak level”, making it clear that policymakers are still planning for – or at least leaving the door open to – a late peak, only just before 2030.
Setting this target from “peak levels” means that the timing and level of China’s emissions peak affects not only the path of its CO2 output in the next few years, but also the size of cuts needed to meet the 2035 goal – and presumably also subsequent targets thereafter.
The target of reducing emissions from “peak levels” could also create an incentive for provinces to increase emissions before the expected peak year, known as “storming the peak” in Chinese.
This incentive could be curbed by the creation of the “dual control” system for carbon intensity and total carbon emissions. The Central Committee of the Communist Party recently reiterated that this should happen during the next five-year period, but the specific timeline is an open question.
If the system is not operational from 2026, with annual carbon intensity and possibly absolute carbon emission targets allocated to provinces, then that could further allow for and incentivise emissions increases in the short term.
At the same time, China has made commitments to peak emissions before 2030, reduce coal consumption gradually during the 2026-30 period and to reduce carbon emissions per unit of GDP by more than 65% by 2030, from 2005 levels.
Meeting the last target – which China has made internationally as part of its 2030 Paris pledge – would require, in practice, that emissions in 2030 are limited at or below their 2024 level, given progress to date and expected GDP growth rates.
Realising these targets, in turn, would require clean-energy growth rates well above the minimum of 200GW of new wind and solar capacity per year, set by China’s 2035 pledge – unless the rate of energy-demand growth sees a sharp and unexpected slowdown.
Beating these minimum clean-energy growth rates would also be necessary if policymakers want to maintain the tailwind that these sectors have provided to China’s economy in recent years.
About the data
Data for the analysis was compiled from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, National Energy Administration of China, China Electricity Council and China Customs official data releases, from WIND Information, an industry data provider, and Sinopec, China’s largest oil refiner.
Wind and solar output, and thermal power breakdown by fuel, was calculated by multiplying power generating capacity at the end of each month by monthly utilisation, using data reported by China Electricity Council through Wind Financial Terminal.
Total generation from thermal power and generation from hydropower and nuclear power was taken from National Bureau of Statistics monthly releases.
Monthly utilisation data was not available for biomass, so the annual average of 52% for 2023 was applied. Power sector coal consumption was estimated based on power generation from coal and the average heat rate of coal-fired power plants during each month, to avoid the issue with official coal consumption numbers affecting recent data.
CO2 emissions estimates are based on National Bureau of Statistics default calorific values of fuels and emissions factors from China’s latest national greenhouse gas emissions inventory, for the year 2021. Cement CO2 emissions factor is based on annual estimates up to 2024.
For oil consumption, apparent consumption of transport fuels (diesel, petrol and jet fuel) is taken from Sinopec quarterly results, with monthly disaggregation based on production minus net exports. The consumption of these three fuels is labeled as oil product consumption in transportation, as it is the dominant sector for their use.
Apparent consumption of other oil products is calculated from refinery throughput, with the production of the transport fuels and the net exports of other oil products subtracted. Fossil-fuel consumption includes non-energy use, as most products are short-lived and incineration is the dominant disposal method.
The post Analysis: China’s CO2 emissions have now been flat or falling for 18 months appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: China’s CO2 emissions have now been flat or falling for 18 months
As COP30 began in the Brazilian city of Belém, Carbon Brief hosted the first of three webinars to exclusively answer questions submitted by holders of the Insider Pass.
Topics ranged from China’s priorities and the absence of the US through to narratives around geoengineering.
Expected key outcomes at COP30 were also discussed, including the Tropical Forest Forever Fund (TFFF), agreed indicators under the global goal on adaptation and a “Belém action mechanism” within the just-transition work programme.
Climate finance continued to be a key feature across the numerous topics raised, in particular in the wake of the Baku to Belém roadmap – published just five days before the start of COP30.
The webinar featured six Carbon Brief journalists – including three on the ground in Belém – covering all elements of the summit:
- Dr Simon Evans – deputy editor and senior policy editor
- Daisy Dunne – associate editor
- Josh Gabbatiss – policy correspondent
- Anika Patel – China analyst
- Aruna Chandrasekhar – land, food systems and nature journalist
- Molly Lempriere – policy section editor
A recording of the webinar (below) is now available to watch on YouTube.
The post Webinar: Carbon Brief’s first ‘ask us anything’ at COP30 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
How to share the bill for climate change fairly will once again top the priority list for African government negotiators at COP30 in Belém, a year after the so-called “Finance COP” in Baku left them feeling short-changed.
As floods, droughts and related food insecurity threaten years of development gains across the continent, African countries say richer nations must step up with finance solutions that help them become more resilient to climate disasters – and transition to cleaner energy – without adding to their hefty debt loads.
Several African countries have lowered ambition for cutting emissions in their latest national climate plans (known as NDCs), citing a lack of funding that has hampered climate action.
For Africa’s climate negotiators, the challenge is not just about money, but making sure the reality of how they are experiencing global warming is recognised with practical solutions as the world strives for net zero emissions by mid-century.
Carlos Lopes, an economist from Guinea-Bissau, who is COP30’s special envoy for Africa, told Climate Home News he expects African countries to “go to the formal negotiations and denounce issues of climate injustice and claim what we believe is the compensation that is required to repair it”.
The goal, he said in an interview, is to change the narrative “to make sure that Africans are not going to be treated as if they were just the vulnerable crowd, the people that are suffering, the ones that need to be helped”.
With COP30 – billed by the Brazilian host government as the “implementation COP” – kicking off on Monday, here are some of the key themes African negotiators are focused on:
Debt-free finance
In Baku, developing countries failed to secure a promise of $1.3 trillion in annual financial support from rich donor governments, as they had proposed. Instead a new goal of $300 billion a year by 2035 was agreed, a sum poorer nations say falls far short of meeting their rising needs.
“We had fairly uncomfortable results in Baku,” Richard Muyungi, the Tanzanian chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), told journalists in the run-up to this year’s COP30 summit.
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African governments are hoping the “Baku to Belém Roadmap” – released ahead of COP30 but not formally part of the talks – will be put into practice, boosting the provision of climate cash from both public and private sources to $1.3 trillion a year by 2035.
To avoid heaping more debt on the continent, the bulk of the money should be grant-based resources, as opposed to loans, Muyungi said.
“[Developed countries must] be mindful of the fact that Africa is not ready to take additional burden in terms of financing,” he said, recalling the UN climate convention principle that countries that caused the climate crisis have a greater responsibility to meet the finance gap.
Africa’s debt has more than doubled in the past decade, with high interest repayments, long-term borrowing time-frames, global inflation, disasters and perceived risks fuelling the rising burden. The African Development Bank estimates that Africa’s total external debt had risen to $1.15 trillion by the end of 2023, with debt servicing reaching $163 billion in 2024, up sharply from $61 billion in 2010.
Unlocking adaptation cash to boost resilience
Adaptation is set to be a major theme of COP30 and African negotiators are aiming to unlock cash to implement their national adaptation plans (NAPs) and adopt metrics for adaptation progress that are tailored to Africa’s specific circumstances.
These metrics were narrowed down at June’s mid-year climate talks in Bonn and in the months since. This is seen as a crucial step for Africa and other developing countries because it will allow them to show how adaptation projects are being implemented on the ground – potentially drawing in more money to build the resilience of local people, economies and infrastructure.
Discussions on finalising a set of around 100 indicators are due to take place in Belém.
COP30 needs to adopt indicators that “reflect Africa’s and vulnerable countries’ realities”, demonstrate progress towards more predictable finance and put adaptation on a par with emissions reduction efforts, said Mohamed Adow, founder of the Nairobi-based think-tank Power Shift Africa.
African negotiators also want to see national adaptation plans becoming a reality on the ground.
So far, more than 20 African countries have submitted their NAPs, detailing measures to cope with climate stresses and disasters. South Africa, for instance, plans to roll out a National Disaster Management Framework, to build the capacity of its emergency response departments, such as health and fire.
But these adaptation strategies are still largely on paper, said AGN head Muyungi. “We have been given resources for the preparation of these plans, but the true implementation of what we need is not given attention,” he lamented.
Benefits for Congo Basin from the TFFF forest fund?
The Congo Basin is home to the world’s second-largest rainforest, yet the region received only 4% of international forest-related financing between 2017 and 2021, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
That means African delegates in Belém are eager to hear more about the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), an investment-driven forest protection initiative launched last week by COP30 host Brazil.
Felix Tshisekedi, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, told the pre-COP leaders’ summit that his country is keen to collaborate with other partners to ensure the TFFF is a success.
Explainer: what is the TFFF, Brazil’s COP30 rainforest fund?
Muyungi said questions remain about how the fund will work, however.
“How Africa will benefit from this is still debatable – but we have requested that we get engaged to ensure that we understand how this fund can help the continent,” he said.
In a position paper released ahead of the climate summit, African civil society groups said COP30 must recognise the Congo Basin “as a vital global climate asset and ensure equitable finance flows to its protection and sustainable management”.
Africa-led initiatives such as the Great Green Wall and the 100 million-hectare African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) must also be supported to strengthen nature-based solutions, they added.
On Friday, Reuters reported that several European donor nations had signed up to a $2.5 billion plan to save the Congo rainforest, launching a conservation scheme that could be seen as a rival to the TFFF.
A just transition made for Africa
After negotiations on a Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) stalled at COP29, activists want to see the issue back in focus at COP30 via a proposed Belém Action Mechanism – a framework to ensure climate action fosters social justice and equity in job creation and finance so that communities and workers reliant on coal mines or oil refineries are not left behind in the global shift to cleaner sources of energy.
Again, securing measures that reflect African concerns will be key, said Muyungi.
“The agenda here is to ensure that just transition is not about e-mobility, it’s not about the hydrogen economy, it’s about ensuring that Africa gets what it needs to be part of the world. Energy accessibility is one of the key priority issues in the just transition,” he said, noting that 600 million Africans still have no access to a reliable power supply.
In his statement at last week’s leaders’ summit in Belém, Ghana’s environment minister, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, said the shift to clean energy “must not leave vulnerable communities behind”, adding that workers in traditional industries need to be protected, with their voices guiding “our decisions as a bridge and not a cliff”.
And as the world transitions to clean energy, fuelling demand for minerals critical to supply chains, resource-rich African countries are pushing to ensure they reap direct benefits.
COP30 could confront “glaring gap” in clean energy agenda: mining
Civil society groups, in an open letter, urged delegates in Belém to put human rights, environmental protection and equity in mineral value chains at the forefront of COP30 discussions.
“We need to ensure that these critical minerals are indeed helping the continent to move from where we are to go to a better world,” Muyungi said.
Africa’s COP30 envoy Lopes said African countries want to ensure that discussions at COP30 on critical minerals focus on how those resources “should be used to power Africa’s transition” rather than those of other countries, and how the shift to clean energy can support their development more broadly.
Loss and damage payouts for climate impacts
Between 2020 and 2030, loss and damage costs in Africa are estimated to range between $280 billion-$440 billion a year, depending on the level of warming and severity of extreme weather events including storms, droughts, flooding and rising seas, according to the African Development Bank.
In its new climate plan, South Africa says climate impacts in the country have exceeded the limits of adaptation and it is now facing “irreplaceable loss” as climate change damages cultural heritage sites, erodes indigenous knowledge systems, shrinks farmlands, reduces economic growth and worsens health through problems like heat-driven illness. The plan calls for international support to help it cope.
At COP30, where the new global Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) was due to put out its first call for proposals on Monday, African civil society groups want to see the fund provide grants to help climate-vulnerable nations on the continent with both sudden and slow-onset crises such as losses caused by rising seas or desertification.
Loss and damage fund will launch call for proposals at COP30
In the case of climate disasters, mechanisms for rapid emergency response and disbursement of money should also be established, they said. Those could include direct cash transfers to affected populations and budget support for national and local governments.
Africa COP30 envoy Lopes, who has previously held positions at the United Nations and African Union, said loss and damage must be addressed on “a tragedy-emergency basis”, adding that Africa needs a fund that is “efficient” and can “change the reality of an emergency as fast as possible”.
After the FRLD was launched to great fanfare two years ago at the COP28 talks in Dubai, there were hopes for quick results, he noted, but so far little has materialised and the fund – which currently has only around $400 million in its coffers – has received no significant new donations.
“It’s one more instance where climate justice is being shortchanged with words that continue to over-promise and under-deliver,” Lopes said.
The post What do African countries want from COP30? appeared first on Climate Home News.
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