After holding stable for two years, China’s carbon emissions may climb back up as the construction of new fossil fuel power plants accelerates and recent policy changes cloud the outlook for clean energy, a new report warned.
The world’s biggest carbon polluter is expected to keep total emissions flat in 2025 despite rising energy demand – a sign that clean power may, for the first time, fully offset the growth in electricity consumption, the analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) showed.
But the Finland-based research group cautioned that a “concerning” policy environment for the next few years increased the risk of an emissions rebound. It added that China was also set to miss its key target for cutting carbon intensity – CO2 emissions per unit of gross domestic product – this year, meaning steeper reductions will be needed to hit its headline 2030 climate goal of slashing carbon intensity by 65%.
Belinda Schäpe, China policy analyst at CREA, said it was unclear how strongly committed China remained to its targets, despite leaders’ assertions that the government always makes good on its climate promises.
“All of this uncertainty raises a lot of questions around where emissions are going,” Schäpe told Climate Home News. “At the moment, it’s very finely balanced. They are just about flat but could well go up or down again based on the decisions that the government will make.”
New pricing model for renewables
Record solar energy installations and strong growth in wind power capacity have increased the share of non-fossil fuel electricity this year, with emissions from the power sector set to decline for the first time since 2016, the report said. But that progress has been partially countered by the rapidly growing use of coal for the production of plastics and other chemical products, meaning overall emissions are expected to remain stable.
At the same time, experts have warned that China’s new pricing system for solar and wind projects risks slowing the clean energy boom. Under the new policy introduced last June, developers of new solar and wind power plants need to secure contracts with provincial authorities through competitive auctions, instead of being guaranteed a fixed price.
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Schäpe said prices had been “very, very low” in some of the auctions so far. “Of course, that’s great for consumers, but it’s really bad for project developers because they don’t want to go ahead and invest in new projects facing the risk of no returns,” she said.
Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) cut its forecast for China’s 2025-2030 renewables growth by 5% due to the changes in the pricing model. The watchdog’s head Fatih Birol said the profitability of renewables projects – especially solar and wind – was expected to decline between 10% and 15% with the new policy.
Coal power boom continues
Coal power plants, on the other hand, are protected from this market-based system, relying instead on long-term power purchase agreements that lock in prices, Schäpe said, describing it as “unfair competition”.
China’s rapidly expanding coal power fleet is adding to the concerns. In 2025, the country has added the largest amount of coal-fired capacity since 2015, while progress on retiring older plants remains very slow, CREA’s report highlighted.
This runs contrary to a pledge made by President Xi Jinping in 2021 to “strictly control” new coal power projects. That commitment was omitted from Beijing’s updated national climate plan (NDC) submitted in late October ahead of COP30.
In its new NDC, China set an absolute emission reduction target for the first time, committing to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by between 7% and 10% by 2035 from unspecified “peak levels”.
Focus on next five-year plan
Schäpe said that the absence of a base year could create an incentive to raise emissions and “storm the peak” – pushing them as high as possible to make future reduction targets easier to meet.
She said this put the focus on China’s 2030 carbon intensity target, adding that if Beijing was still serious about meeting it, emissions would need to peak “around now”.
China targeted an 18% reduction between 2021 and 2025, but it is projected to achieve about 12% by the end of this year, CREA’s report said. If that is confirmed, China will then need to significantly ramp up efforts to cut carbon intensity in the next five years to achieve its headline climate commitment for 2030.
Analysts expect China’s new five-year plan – the blueprint for its economic development – to provide more clarity on the country’s energy policies next year.
“We will see how the government is going to balance these two opposing forces: the outgoing coal industry interests and the new cleantech sectors that are meant to become the driver of future growth,” Schäpe said.
The post China risks emissions rebound amid policy shifts, experts warn appeared first on Climate Home News.
China risks emissions rebound amid policy shifts, experts warn
Next week, diplomats from around the world will descend on Yerevan, Armenia, to negotiate a series of decisions under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Between 19 and 30 October, 196 parties will gather to hammer out the precise wording of the dozens of legal texts that make up the decisions under the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the CBD.
This year’s summit is particularly significant, as it marks the halfway point between the agreement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the deadline for achieving its targets.
The CBD has found that countries are currently not on track to meet 22 out of the framework’s 23 targets.
During the fortnight, delegates will also be negotiating decisions relating to the two supplemental protocols to the CBD: the Cartagena Protocol, which covers biosafety; and the Nagoya Protocol, which covers access and benefit-sharing for the use of genetic resources.
(The Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols, which are each governed by a “meeting of the parties”, or “MOP”, have fewer parties than the CBD as a whole, with 173 and 141, respectively.)
Carbon Brief is tracking the progress of countries towards consensus on dozens of negotiating texts using the interactive table below.
The tracker includes texts from the COP, as well as the MOPs for the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols. It also includes draft decisions from the most recent subsidiary body meetings, as these form the starting point for the negotiations in Yerevan.
The CBD has three subsidiary bodies: the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA), the subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) and the subsidiary body on article 8(j) and other provisions (SB8J).
SB8J focuses on issues related to the Indigenous peoples and local communities. It was established at COP16 in Cali, Colombia, in 2024.
The first two columns of the interactive tracker list the topic of each agenda item and the relevant body, with subsequent columns including dates, page counts and links to the original documents.
The table is searchable and can be sorted using the arrows in the header.
Areas of disagreement in UN draft texts are denoted by square brackets. Counting the brackets in a particular iteration of a text therefore gives a sense of how far parties are from reaching consensus.
The bracket column is colour-coded, with dark green indicating a low number of brackets and red indicating a high number of brackets remaining.
Texts can also present parties with choices using “options” or alternatives (“alt”), which are counted together in the sixth column of the table.
The key discussions in Yerevan will centre around two agenda items in particular. The first is the global review, which will assess progress towards the GBF and make recommendations for accelerating action.
The second is finance, which can be separated into two parts: resource mobilisation and the financial mechanism. On resource mobilisation, biodiverse global south countries are likely to push for an increased amount of international finance for conservation.
Disagreement over the creation of the financial mechanism led to the suspension of COP16 in Cali in October 2024, as parties failed to find agreement on the mobilisation of finance before the end of the summit.
Global south countries want the establishment of a separate financial mechanism under the control of the CBD; global north countries largely prefer to maintain the existing mechanism, which sits under the Global Environment Facility.
At the resumed session of COP16 in Rome in early 2025, countries agreed on a roadmap that would lead to the establishment of a permanent mechanism.
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The post Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the COP17 biodiversity summit
A beacon of love
On an outer island of Fiji, two thousand nautical miles from Sydney, is a shining light of hope and resilience for our troubled world.
The island of Kioa is home to a Tuvaluan community who migrated from their atoll of Vaitupu in the late 1940s. It is a land of warm hearts, big smiles, and deep cultural roots; a place where the sound of a conch still summons the island together, where islanders paddle out to fish in carved outrigger canoes, and healthy happy children walk barefoot to school.
Here, culture is life. Kioans live sustainably through their traditional knowledge and practices. The island is alive with song, dance and the rhythms of a life tied to the tides, the winds, and the seasons.
Facing the future
Greenpeace has been lucky to have a relationship with Kioa for a number of years now, and we are continually learning from this remarkable community.
Last week, as part of our Voyaging Oceania project, we returned to the island. Our purpose was twofold —- to carry messages from the island to leaders gathering in Nadi this week for the Pacific Pre-COP, and to support the Kioa community in their efforts to improve water security for the island.
Unlike Tuvalu itself, with its eight atolls, Kioa is a mountainous, forested and richly fertile island. It will remain habitable far into the future. Kioans did not initially migrate from Vaitupu due to climate change, but the move was prophetic. They now have a lifeboat.
However, even Kioa faces challenges on our rapidly warming planet, in particular when it comes to water. Climate change is shifting once reliable rainfall patterns. On top of this, the island is already feeling the effect of this year’s intensifying El Niño event, which for Fiji means reduced rainfall and prolonged dry spells.
Right now, fresh water has to be carefully rationed, and is only available for a few hours a day. During last week’s visit aboard our campaigning ship Oceania, Greenpeace was privileged to work with the Kioa community on a new solar-powered water distribution project for the island.
Designed and led by the island, the project involves using a solar pump to move water from a reliable source to a storage tank and then using gravity to distribute the water around the village.
It was a lesson in how local knowledge and ingenuity can be the backbone of today’s climate solutions. To build a dam around the source, the local community knew the exact spot where they could gather gravel at low tide to mix with the cement. They took only what was needed, knowing that all resources must be carefully conserved. Kioa has no roads and no machinery, and it was an all-of-island effort to carry the materials up to the project site, including many heavy bags of sand and rock.
Such projects truly bring to life the vision of a resilient, locally-led, fossil fuel free Pacific.