At COP29 in Baku, developed-country parties such as the EU, the US and Japan agreed to help raise “at least” $300bn a year by 2035 for climate action in developing countries.
The goal was welcomed by global-north leaders and presented as a “tripling” of the previous target for international climate finance.
Yet it faced a strong backlash from many developing countries, with some branding it a “joke” and “betrayal”.
Closer analysis of the goal and climate-finance data helps to explain this response.
Analysts have shown that the target is achievable with virtually “no additional budgetary effort” from developed countries, beyond already-committed increases.
A combination of pre-existing national pledges and multilateral development bank (MDB) plans will bring climate finance up to around $200bn a year by the end of this decade.
Counting money already being distributed by emerging economies such as China – as “encouraged” under the new goal – could bring the total to $265bn by 2030. This could mean the target is well on its way to being met by that date, with minimal extra effort.
Moreover, as activists and academics have noted, the $300bn target does not account for inflation. When this is factored in, its “real” value could shrink by around a quarter.
The new target has emerged against a backdrop of financial strain and political uncertainty in developed countries.
At the same time, developing countries have stressed that they need climate finance to reach the “trillions of dollars” needed to cut emissions and protect themselves from climate change.
This article looks at three ways in which the $300bn goal could be met with little extra financial effort by developed countries – and provide fewer benefits for developing countries than the figure suggests.
- Much of the goal will be met with ‘no additional effort’
- Developing-country contributions could cover part of the goal
- Inflation wipes out much of the increase in climate finance
1. Much of the goal will be met with ‘no additional effort’
The $300bn climate-finance target agreed at COP29 in Baku will be met with finance from a “wide variety of sources”, largely coming from developed countries.
This part of the “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) for climate finance is likely to be made up of public finance provided directly by governments, as well as money from MDBs, specialised climate funds and private finance “mobilised” by public investments.
The wording of the $300bn goal frames it as an extension of the $100bn target. This was the amount that developed countries agreed in 2009 to raise for developing countries annually by 2020 – a goal that was extended through to 2025 by the Paris Agreement.
Beyond the central goal of $300bn, the NCQG also includes a much broader “aspirational” target of $1.3tn a year in climate finance by 2035.
However, this is harder to assess, as the text of the deal is vague about who will be responsible for raising the funds, which could include various sources that are beyond the jurisdiction of the UN climate process.
Developed countries and MDBs had already committed to raising their climate-finance contributions before a deal was struck at COP29, as noted in a joint analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), ODI, Germanwatch and ECCO.
The collective impact of these pre-existing commitments can be seen below, with climate finance from developed countries set to increase from $115.9bn in 2022 – the most recent year for which data is available – to $197bn in 2030. This can be seen in the chart below, which does not account for inflation. (See: Inflation wipes out much of the increase in climate finance.)
The expected increase between 2022 and 2030 comes from a few different sources.
The analysts calculated that climate finance distributed “bilaterally” – as grants or loans via overseas aid and other public funding – was already expected to increase $6.6bn annually by 2025, based on existing pledges, bringing the total to $50bn. (The chart above assumes that bilateral finance remains at this level up to 2030.)
They also estimated that existing pledges and reforms at specialised climate funds, such as the Green Climate Fund and Climate Investment Funds, would add another $1.3bn per year by 2030. This would bring their contribution to $5bn.
The biggest increase that was already locked in before the COP29 deal was a pledge by MDBs – which provide 40% of existing climate finance – to increase their contributions further.
A joint statement by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and others in the first week of COP29 committed to raising $120bn of climate finance per year by 2030 for low- and middle-income countries. Of this, $84bn can be attributed to developed countries, based on their shareholdings in these banks.
On top of this, the climate-finance analysts estimated that $58bn of private finance would be mobilised by these bilateral and multilateral contributions in 2030 – up from $21.9bn in 2022.
The chart below shows the estimated breakdown, by source, of climate finance in 2030, compared to 2022.
These expected increases over the course of this decade mean that with “no additional efforts”, beyond what had already been agreed prior to COP29, developed countries would have been on a trajectory to reach around $200bn per year by 2030, and $250bn per year by 2035. (The latter was the first numerical target proposed by developed countries at COP29, which was, ultimately, negotiated upwards to $300bn on the final day.)
NRDC climate-finance expert Joe Thwaites, one of the researchers who undertook the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NDRC) analysis, tells Carbon Brief that bilateral funding directly from governments is the “big constraint” in climate finance. COP29 came just after the re-election in the US of climate-sceptic Donald Trump and many European countries have cut their aid budgets. Thwaites says:
“The MDBs are growing and doing all kinds of reforms and getting bigger and better, but the bilaterals are what are politically very stuck.”
Moreover, the COP29 climate-finance deal contains no pledge by developed countries to provide a set amount of public, bilateral finance, despite strong pressure from developing countries to include such a goal.
Following COP29, Thwaites released updated modelling to calculate different ways of reaching the $300bn target. He wrote:
“What is clear is that $300bn by 2035 is eminently achievable, with little to no additional budgetary effort required from developed countries, let alone other contributors, to meet the goal.”
2. Developing-country contributions could cover part of the goal
Unlike the earlier $100bn target, contributions from developing countries could count towards the new climate finance goal.
Only developed countries are obliged to provide climate finance to developing countries under the Paris Agreement. But the NCQG outcome says that developing countries can “voluntarily” declare any climate-related funds they contribute, if they choose to do so.
This allowed negotiators at COP29 to skirt the controversial issue of formally expanding the list of official donors that are required to help with financial aid.
Developed countries had previously been pushing to enlist relatively wealthy developing nations, such as China and the Gulf states, to share the financial burden.
Several countries described since the early 1990s as “developing” under the UN’s climate convention are known to already make large, climate-related financial contributions to other developing countries. Examples include China’s Belt and Road initiative supporting clean-energy expansion and South Korea’s contributions to the GCF.
In fact, at COP29 China announced for the first time that it had “provided and mobilised” more than $24.5bn for climate projects in developing countries since 2017 – confirming that its contributions are comparable with those of many developed countries.
This roughly aligns with calculations by research groups that have placed China’s annual climate finance at around $4bn a year.
Both developed and developing countries pay money into MDBs. As well as “encouraging” developing countries to voluntarily contribute directly to climate finance, the NCQG outcome also specifies that these countries could start counting the share of climate-related money paid out of MDBs that can be traced back to their inputs.
Roughly, 30% of the banks’ “outflows” can be attributed to developing countries in this way.
Counting the developing-country share of the projected increase in climate finance from MDBs by 2030 would add an extra $36bn to the global total, plus an extra $20bn of private finance mobilised by the funds.
It is not possible to say for sure how much climate finance new contributors such as China will choose to officially declare.
However, the chart below shows an estimate based on an “illustrative scenario”, by NRDC and others, of bilateral finance and multilateral climate funds, combined with expected MDB outflows and the associated private finance that this would mobilise. This could bring total annual climate finance up to $265bn by 2030.
Some observers at COP29 said they hoped that officially counting developing-country contributions towards UN “climate finance” targets would enable parties, such as the EU, to set more ambitious goals.
However, Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), dismissed this as an “accounting trick”, because these funds are already being provided.
Li Shuo, head of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), tells Carbon Brief that the NCQG outcome could bring more attention to China’s climate-related aid and lead to “stronger and better climate support from Beijing”. However, he notes that this is in the context of a low-ambition global target that is a “far cry” from what is needed:
“I take this as a classic example of geopolitical competition weakening environmental ambition, namely, the geopolitical desire of including China as a donor without corresponding desire of developed countries to contribute more limited the overall scale of climate finance.”
3. Inflation wipes out much of the increase in climate finance
One issue that has surfaced in the wake of COP29 is the impact of inflation. Campaigners have noted that the failure to factor this into the 2035 climate-finance target means that, by the time it is met, the true value of the money pledged will be far lower than it is today.
In an article highlighting this issue, the Guardian reported that the $300bn goal was, therefore, “not the tripling of pledges that has been claimed”.
Researchers had flagged this before COP29, pointing out that the previous $100bn annually by 2020goal, which was first set in 2009, had also not accounted for inflation.
They noted that merely correcting the $100bn for inflation would bring it to between $139bn and around $150bn a year. (Such calculations depend on the rate of inflation applied to the starting figure, as well as the base year for the calculation.)
Civil-society groups at COP29, such as Power Shift Africa, estimated that the impact of inflation would cut the “real” value of the $300bn to $175bn in today’s money by 2035. This is based on an annual inflation rate of 5%.
In its analysis, the Guardian opted for an inflation rate of 2.4% – based on the average rate in the US over the past 15 years. This is taken to reflect the conditions for governments contributing climate finance and the currency much of it would be provided in.
The figure below shows the impact of an inflation rate of 3%. This is based on input from economists and analysis by the Center for Global Development (CGD), which, in turn, is based on the World Bank’s global GDP deflator.
If inflation over the next decade follows this trend, the $300bn pledged in 2024 would only be worth $217bn in today’s money in 2035 – a 28% reduction in value.
In order to offer climate finance with a real value of $300bn in 2035, countries would have needed to set a goal for that year of around $415bn.
(The figures in the chart above cannot be directly compared with the existing pledges made by governments and MDBs, as those too would need to be adjusted for inflation.)
CGD modelling suggests that if developed countries’ climate-finance contributions simply increase in line with expected inflation and gross national income (GNI) growth, they would reach $220bn by 2035.
The CGD analysts write in a blog post that “by the time the new goal is met, beneficiary countries will find that the purchasing power of these resources has eroded significantly”.
Independent experts, as well as climate-vulnerable countries themselves, emphasised both before and during COP29 that more than $1tn dollars will be needed each year to help developing countries deal with climate change. Many developing nations said that around $600bn of this should come directly from developed countries’ public coffers.
With such a relatively small amount of finance pledged for the NCQG, some developing countries have already indicated that they may scale back their future climate ambitions.
The post Analysis: Why the $300bn climate-finance goal is even less ambitious than it seems appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Why the $300bn climate-finance goal is even less ambitious than it seems
Climate Change
China Briefing 11 December 2025: Winter record looms; Joint climate statement with France; How ‘mid-level bureaucrats’ help shape policy
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.
China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Record power and gas demand
DOMESTIC TURBINES: China’s top economic planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), expects both electricity demand and gas demand to hit the “highest level yet recorded in winter”, reported Reuters. Data from a sample of coal plants nevertheless showed a recent drop in output year-on-year. Meanwhile, China has developed a “high-efficiency” gas turbine which will “strengthen[ China’s] power grid with low-carbon electricity”, said state news agency Xinhua. According to Bloomberg, the turbine is the first to have been fully produced in China, helping the country to “reduce reliance on imported technology amid a global shortage of equipment”.
‘SUBDUED’ OIL GROWTH: Chinese oil demand is likely to “remain subdued” until at least the middle of 2026, reported Bloomberg. Next year will see “one of the lowest growth rates in China in quite some time”, said commodities trader Trafigura’s chief economist Saad Rahim, reported the Financial Times. Demand is set to plateau until 2030, according to research linked to “state oil major” CNPC, said Reuters. In the building materials industry, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are “projected to fall by 25%” in 2025 relative to pre-2021 levels, China Building Materials Federation president Yan Xiaofeng told state broadcaster CCTV.
FLAT EMISSIONS GROWTH: China’s CO2 emissions in 2024 grew by 0.6% year-on-year, reported Xinhua, citing the newly released China Greenhouse Gas Bulletin (2024). This represented a “significant narrowing from the 2023 increase and remains below the global average growth rate of 0.8%”, it added. (The bulletin confirms analysis for Carbon Brief published in January, which put China’s 2024 emissions growth at 0.8%.)
China-France climate statements
CLIMATE BONHOMIE: During a visit by French president Emmanuel Macron to China, the two countries signed a joint statement on climate change, reported Xinhua. It published the full text of the statement, which pledged more cooperation on “accelerating” renewables globally, as well as “enhancing communication” in carbon pricing, methane, adaptation and other areas. It also said China and France would support developing countries’ access to climate finance, adding that developed nations will “take the lead in providing and mobilising” this “before 2035”, while encouraging developing countries to “voluntarily contribute”.
MORE COOPERATION: China and France issued separate statements on “nuclear energy” cooperation, Xinhua reported, as well as on expanding cooperation on the “green economy”, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.
EU’s new ‘economic security’ package
NEW PLANS, SAME TOOLS: Meanwhile, the EU has issued new plans to “boost EU resilience to threats like rare-earth shortages”, said Reuters, including an “economic security doctrine” that would encourage “new measures…designed to counter unfair trade and market distortions, including overcapacity”. A second plan on critical minerals will “restrict exports of [recyclable] rare-earth waste and battery scrap” to shore up supplies for “electric cars, wind turbines and semiconductors”, according to another Reuters article. Euractiv characterised the policy package as a “reframing of existing tools and plans”.
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‘NOT VERY CREDIBLE’: EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told the Financial Times that the latest push against the bloc’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), which the outlet said is “led by China, India and Saudi Arabia”, was “not very credible”. A “GT Voice” comment in the state-supporting Global Times said the CBAM exposed a dilemma around the “absence of a globally accepted, transparent and equitable standard for measuring carbon footprints”. It called CBAM a “pioneering step”, but said climate efforts needed “greater international coordination, not unilateral enforcement”.
FIRST REVIEW: The EU has undertaken its first “formal review” of the tariffs placed on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs), assessing a price undertaking offer submitted by Volkswagen’s Chinese joint venture, reported SCMP. Chinese EVs – including both hybrid and pure EVs – saw their “second-best month on record” in October, with sales coming down slightly from September’s peak, said Bloomberg.
More China news
- ECONOMIC SIGNALS: At the central economic work conference, held in Beijing on 10-11 December, President Xi Jinping said China would adhere to the “dual-carbon” goals and promote a “comprehensive green transition”, reported Xinhua.
- EFFORTS ‘INTENSIFIED’: Ahead of the meeting, premier Li Qiang also noted earlier that energy conservation and carbon reduction efforts must be “intensified”, according to the People’s Daily.
- JET FUEL: A major jet fuel distributor is being acquired by oil giant Sinopec, which could “risk slowing [China’s] push to decarbonise air travel”, reported Caixin.
- SLOW AND STEADY: An article in the People’s Daily said China’s energy transition is “not something that can be achieved overnight”.
- ‘ECO-POLICE’: China’s environment ministry published a draft grading system for “atmospheric environmental performance in key industries”, including assessment of “significant…carbon emission reduction effects”, noted International Energy Net. China will also set up an “eco-police” mechanism in 2027, China Daily said.
- INNOVATION INITIATIVE: The National Energy Administration issued a call for the “preliminary establishment of a new energy system that is clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient” in the next five years, reported BJX News. The plan also noted: “Those who take the lead in [energy technology] innovation will gain the initiative.”
Spotlight
Interview: How ‘mid-level bureaucrats’ are helping to shape Chinese climate policy
Local officials are viewed as relatively weak actors in China’s governance structure.
However, a new book – “Implementing a low-carbon future: climate leadership in Chinese cities” – argues that these officials play an important role in designing innovative and enduring climate policy.
Carbon Brief interviews author Weila Gong, non-resident scholar at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy’s 21st Century China Center and visiting scholar at UC Davis, on her research.
Below are highlights from the conversation. The full interview is published on the Carbon Brief website.
Carbon Brief: You’ve just written a book about climate policy in Chinese cities. Could you explain why subnational governments are important for China’s climate policy in general?
Weila Gong: China is the world’s largest carbon emitter [and] over 85% of China’s carbon emissions come from cities.
We tend to think that officials at the provincial, city and township levels are barriers for environmental protection, because they are focused on promoting economic growth.
But I observed these actors participating in China’s low-carbon city pilot. I was surprised to see so many cities wanted to participate, even though there was no specific evaluation system that would reward their efforts.
CB: Could you help us understand the mindset of these bureaucrats? How do local-level officials design policies in China?
WG: We tend to focus on top political figures, such as mayors or [municipal] party secretaries. But mid-level bureaucrats [are usually the] ones implementing low-carbon policies.
Mid-level local officials saw [the low-carbon city pilot] as a way to help their bosses get promoted, which in turn would help them advance their own career. As such, they [aimed to] create unique, innovative and visible policy actions to help draw the attention [of their superiors].
They are also often more interested in climate issues if it is in the interest of their agency or local government.
Another motivation is accessing finance [by using] pilot programmes, if their ideas impress the central-level government.
CB: Could you give an example of what drives innovative local climate policies?
WG: National-level policies and pilot programme schemes provide openings for local governments to think about how and whether they should engage more in addressing climate change.
By experiment[ing] with policy at a local level, local governments help national-level officials develop responses to emerging policy challenges.
Local carbon emission trading systems (ETSs) are an example.
One element that made the Shenzhen ETS successful is “entrepreneurial bureaucrats” [who have the ability to design, push through and maintain new local-level climate policies].
Even though we might think local officials are constrained in terms of policy or financial resources, they often have the leverage and space to build coalitions…and know how to mobilise political support.
CB: What needs to be done to strengthen sub-national climate policy making?
WG: It’s very important to have groups of personnel trained on climate policy…[Often] climate change is only one of local officials’ day-to-day responsibilities. We need full-time staff to follow through on policies from the beginning right up to implementation.
Secondly, while almost all cities have made carbon-peaking plans, one area in which the government can make further progress is data.
Most Chinese cities haven’t yet established regular carbon accounting systems, [and only have access to] inadequate statistics. Local agencies can’t always access detailed data [held at the central level]…[while] much of the company-level data is self-reported.
Finally, China will always need local officials willing to try new policy instruments. Ensuring they have the conditions to do this is very important.
Watch, read, listen
BREAKNECK SPEED: In a conversation with the Zero podcast, tech analyst Dan Wang outlined how an “engineering mindset” may have given China the edge in developing clean-energy systems in comparison to the US.
QUESTION OF CURRENCY: Institute of Finance and Sustainability president Ma Jun and Climate Bonds Initiative CEO Sean Kidney examined how China’s yuan-denominated loans can “ease the climate financing crunch” in the South China Morning Post.
DRIVING CHANGE: Deutsche Welle broadcast a report on how affordable cleantech from China is accelerating the energy transition in global south countries.
EXPOSING LOOPHOLES: Economic news outlet Jiemian investigated how a scandal involving the main developer of pumped storage capacity in China revealed “regulatory loopholes” in constructing such projects.
$180 billion
The amount of outward direct investment Chinese companies have committed to cleantech projects overseas since 2023, according to a new report by thinktank Climate Energy Finance.
New science
- A new study looking at battery electric trucks across China, Europe and the US showed they “can reach 27-58% reductions in lifecycle CO2 emissions compared with diesel trucks” | Nature Reviews Clean Technology
- “Shortcomings remain” in China’s legal approach to offshore carbon capture, utilisation and storage, such as a lack of “specialised” legal frameworks | Climate Policy
China Briefing is written by Anika Patel and edited by Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 11 December 2025: Winter record looms; Joint climate statement with France; How ‘mid-level bureaucrats’ help shape policy appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China’s central and local governments, as well as state-owned enterprises, are busy preparing for the next five-year planning period, spanning 2026-30.
The top-level 15th five-year plan, due to be published in March 2026, will shape greenhouse gas emissions in China – and globally – for the rest of this decade and beyond.
The targets set under the plan will determine whether China is able to get back on track for its 2030 climate commitments, which were made personally by President Xi Jinping in 2021.
This would require energy sector carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall by 2-6% by 2030, much more than implied by the 2035 target of a 7-10% cut from “peak levels”.
The next five-year plan will set the timing and the level of this emissions peak, as well as whether emissions will be allowed to rebound in the short term.
The plan will also affect the pace of clean-energy growth, which has repeatedly beaten previous targets and has become a key driver of the nation’s economy.
Some 250-350 gigawatts (GW) of new wind and solar would be needed each year to meet China’s 2030 commitments, far above the 200GW being targeted.
Finally, the plans will shape China’s transition away from fossil fuels, with key sectors now openly discussing peak years for coal and oil demand, but with 330GW of new coal capacity in the works and more than 500 new chemical industry projects due in the next five years.
These issues come together in five key questions for climate and energy that Chinese policymakers will need to answer in the final five-year plan documents next year.
Five-year plans and their role in China
1. Will the plan put China back on track for its 2030 Paris pledge?
2. Will the plan upgrade clean-energy targets or pave the way to exceed them?
3. Will the plan set an absolute cap on coal consumption?
4. Will ‘dual control’ of carbon prevent an emission rebound?
5. Will it limit coal-power and chemical-industry growth?
Five-year plans and their role in China
Five-year plans are an essential part of China’s policymaking, guiding decision-making at government bodies, enterprises and banks. The upcoming 15th five-year plan will cover the years 2026-30, set targets for 2030 and use 2025 as its base year.
The top-level five-year plan will be published in March 2026 and is known as the five-year plan on economic and social development. This overarching document will be followed by dozens of sectoral plans, as well as province- and company-level plans.
The sectoral plans are usually published in the second year of the five-year period, meaning they would be expected in 2027.
There will be five-year plans for the energy sector, the electricity sector, for renewable energy, nuclear, coal and many other sub-sectors, as well as plans for major industrial sectors such as steel, construction materials and chemicals.
It is likely that there will also be a plan for carbon emissions or carbon peaking and a five-year plan for the environment.
During the previous five-year period, the plans of provinces and state-owned enterprises for very large-scale solar and wind projects were particularly important, far exceeding the central government’s targets.
The five-year plans create incentives for provincial governments and ministries by setting quantified targets that they are responsible for meeting. These targets influence the performance evaluations of governors, CEOs and party secretaries.
The plans also designate favoured sectors and projects, directing bank lending, easing permitting and providing an implicit government guarantee for the project developers.
Each plan lists numerous things that should be “promoted”, banned or controlled, leaving the precise implementation to different state organs and state-owned enterprises.
Five-year plans can introduce and coordinate national mega-projects, such as the gigantic clean-energy “bases” and associated electricity transmission infrastructure, which were outlined in the previous five-year plan in 2021.
The plans also function as a policy roadmap, assigning the tasks to develop new policies and providing stakeholders with visibility to expected policy developments.
1. Will the plan put China back on track for its 2030 Paris pledge?
Reducing carbon intensity – the energy-sector carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per unit of GDP – has been the cornerstone of China’s climate commitments since the 2020 target announced at the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference.
Consequently, the last three five-year plans have included a carbon-intensity target. The next 15th one is highly likely to set a carbon-intensity target too, given that this is the centerpiece of China’s 2030 climate targets.
Moreover, it was president Xi himself who pledged in 2021 that China would reduce its carbon intensity to 65% below 2005 levels by 2030. This was later formalised in China’s 2030 “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) under the Paris Agreement.
Xi also pledged that China would gradually reduce coal consumption during the five-year period up to 2030. However, China is significantly off track to these targets.
China’s CO2 emissions grew more quickly in the early 2020s than they had been before the Coronavirus pandemic, as shown in the figure below. This stems from a surge in energy consumption during and after the “zero-Covid” period, together with a rapid expansion of coal-fired power and the fossil-fuel based chemical industry. as shown in the figure below.
As a result, meeting the 2030 intensity target would require a reduction in CO2 emissions from current levels, with the level of the drop depending on the rate of economic growth.
Xi’s personal imprimatur would make missing these 2030 targets awkward for China, particularly given the country’s carefully cultivated reputation for delivery. On the other hand, meeting them would require much stronger action than initially anticipated.
Recent policy documents and statements, in particular the recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party for the next five-year plan, and the government’s work report for 2025, have put the emphasis on China’s target to peak emissions before 2030 and the new 2035 emission target, which would still allow emissions to increase over the next five-year period. The earlier 2030 commitments risk being buried as inconvenient.
Still, the State Council’s plan for controlling carbon emissions, published in 2024, says that carbon intensity will be a “binding indicator” for the next five-year period, meaning that a target will be included in the top-level plan published in March 2026.
China is only set to achieve a reduction of about 12% in carbon intensity from 2020 to 2025 – a marked slowdown relative to previous periods, as shown in the figure below.
(This is based on reductions reported annually by the National Bureau of Statistics until 2024 and a projected small increase in energy-sector CO2 emissions in 2025. Total CO2 emissions could still fall this year, when the fall in process emissions from cement production is factored in.)
A 12% fall would be far less than the 18% reduction targeted under the 14th five-year plan, as well as falling short of what would be needed to stay on track to the 2030 target.
To make up the shortfall and meet the 2030 intensity target, China would need to set a goal of around 23% in the next five-year plan. As such, this target will be a key test of China’s determination to honour its climate commitments.
A carbon-intensity target of 23% is likely to receive pushback from some policymakers, as it is much higher than achieved in previous periods. No government or thinktank documents have yet been published with estimates of what the 2030 intensity target would need to be.
In practice, meeting the 2030 carbon intensity target would require reducing CO2 emissions by 2-6% in absolute terms from 2025, assuming a GDP growth rate of 4.2-5.0%.
China needs 4.2% GDP growth over the next decade to achieve Xi’s target of doubling the country’s GDP per capita from 2020 to 2035, a key part of his vision of achieving “socialist modernisation” by 2035, with the target for the next five years likely to be set higher.
Recent high-level policy documents have avoided even mentioning the 2030 intensity target. It is omitted in recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party for the next five-year plan, the foundation on which the plan will be formulated.
Instead, the recommendations emphasised “achieving the carbon peak as scheduled” and “promoting the peaking of coal and oil consumption”, which are less demanding.
The environment ministry, in contrast, continues to pledge efforts to meet the carbon intensity target. However, they are not the ones writing the top-level five-year plan.
The failure to meet the 2025 intensity target has been scarcely mentioned in top-level policy discussions. There was no discernible effort to close the gap to the target, even after the midway review of the five-year plan recognised the shortfall.
The State Council published an action plan to get back on track, including a target for reducing carbon intensity in 2024 – albeit one not sufficient to close the shortfall. Yet this plan, in turn, was not followed up with an annual target for 2025.
The government could also devise ways to narrow the gap to the target on paper, through statistical revisions or tweaks to the definition of carbon intensity, as the term has not been defined in China’s NDCs.
Notably, unlike China’s previous NDC, its latest pledge did not include a progress update for carbon intensity. The latest official update sent to the UN only covers the years to 2020.
This leaves some more leeway for revisions, even though China’s domestic “statistical communiques”, published every year, have included official numbers up to 2024.
Coal consumption growth around 2022 was likely over-reported, so statistical revisions could reduce reported emissions and narrow the gap to the target. Including process emissions from cement, which have been falling rapidly in recent years, and changing how emissions from fossil fuels used as raw materials in the chemicals industry are accounted for, so-called non-energy use, which has been growing rapidly, could make the target easier to meet.
2. Will the plan upgrade clean-energy targets or pave the way to exceed them?
The need to accelerate carbon-intensity reductions also has implications for clean-energy targets.
The current goal is for non-fossil fuels to make up 25% of energy supplies in 2030, up from the 21% expected to be reached this year.
This expansion would be sufficient to achieve the reduction in carbon intensity needed in the next five years, but only if energy consumption growth slows down very sharply. Growth would need to slow to around 1% per year, from 4.1% in the past five years 2019-2024 and from 3.7% in the first three quarters of 2025.
The emphasis on manufacturing in the Central Committee’s recommendations for the next five-year plan is hard to reconcile with such a sharp slowdown, even if electrification will help reduce primary energy demand. During the current five-year period, China abolished the system of controlling total energy consumption and energy intensity, removing the incentive for local governments to curtail energy-intensive projects and industries.
Even if the ratio of total energy demand growth to GDP growth returned to pre-Covid levels, implying total energy demand growth of 2.5% per year, then the share of non-fossil energy would need to reach 31% by 2030 to deliver the required reduction in carbon intensity.
However, China recently set the target for non-fossil energy in 2035 at just 30%. This risks cementing a level of ambition that is likely too low to enable the 2030 carbon-intensity target to be met, whereas meeting it would require non-fossil energy to reach 30% by 2030.
There is ample scope for China to beat its targets for non-fossil energy.
However, given that the construction of new nuclear and hydropower plants generally takes five years or more in China, only those that are already underway have the chance to be completed by 2030. This leaves wind and solar as the quick-to-deploy power generation options that can deliver more non-fossil energy during this five-year period.
Reaching a much higher share of non-fossil energy in 2030, in turn, would therefore require much faster growth in solar and wind than currently targeted. Both the NDRC power-sector plan for 2025-27 and China’s new NDC aim for the addition of about 200 gigawatts (GW) per year of solar and wind capacity, much lower than the 360GW achieved in 2024.
If China continued to add capacity at similar rates, going beyond the government’s targets and instead installing 250-350GW of new solar and wind in each of the next five years, then this would be sufficient to meet the 2030 intensity target, assuming energy demand rising by 2.5-3.0% per year.
All previous wind and solar targets have been exceeded by a wide margin, as shown in the figure below, so there is a good chance that the current one will be, too.
While the new pricing policy for wind and solar has created a much more uncertain and less supportive policy environment for the development of clean energy, provinces have substantial power to create a more supportive environment.
For example, they can include clean-energy projects and downstream projects using clean electricity and green hydrogen in their five-year plans, as well as developing their local electricity markets in a direction that enables new solar and wind projects.
3. Will the plan set an absolute cap on coal consumption?
In 2020, Xi pledged that China would “gradually reduce coal consumption” during the 2026-30 period. The commitment is somewhat ambiguous.
It could be interpreted as requiring a reduction starting in 2026, or a reduction below 2025 levels by 2030, which in practice would mean coal consumption peaking around the midway point of the five-year period, in other words 2027-28.
In either case, if Xi’s pledge were to be cemented in the 15th five-year plan then it would need to include an absolute reduction in coal consumption during 2026-30. An illustration of what this might look like is shown in the figure below.
However, the commitment to reduce coal consumption was missing from China’s new NDC for 2035 and from the Central Committee’s recommendations for the next five-year plan.
The Central Committee called for “promoting a peak in coal and oil consumption”, which is a looser goal as it could still allow an increase in consumption during the period, if the growth in the first years towards 2030 exceeds the reduction after the peak.
The difference between “peaking” and “reducing” is even larger because China has not defined what “peaking” means, even though peaking carbon emissions is the central goal of China’s climate policy for this decade.
Peaking could be defined as achieving a certain reduction from peak before the deadline, or having policies in place that constrain emissions or coal use. It could be seen as reaching a plateau or as an absolute reduction.
While the commitment to “gradually reduce” coal consumption has seemed to fade from discussion, there have been several publications discussing the peak years for different fossil fuels, which could pave the way for more specific peaking targets.
State news agency Xinhua published an article – only in English – saying that coal consumption would peak around 2027 and oil consumption around 2026, while also mentioning the pledge to reduce coal consumption.
The energy research arm of the National Development and Reform Council had said earlier that coal and oil consumption would peak halfway through the next five-year period, in other words 2027-28, while the China Coal Association advocated a slightly later target of 2028.
Setting a targeted peak year for coal consumption before the half-way point of the five-year period could be a way to implement the coal reduction commitment.
With the fall in oil use in transportation driven by EVs, railways and other low-carbon transportation, oil consumption is expected to peak soon or to have peaked already.
State-owned oil firm CNPC projects that China’s oil consumption will peak in 2025 at 770m tonnes, while Sinopec thinks that continued demand for petrochemical feedstocks will keep oil consumption growing until 2027 and it will then peak at 790-800m tonnes.
4. Will ‘dual control’ of carbon prevent an emission rebound?
With the focus on realising a peak in emissions before 2030, there could be a strong incentive for provincial governments and industries to increase emissions in the early years of the five-year period to lock in a higher level of baseline emissions.
This approach is known as “storming the peak” (碳冲锋) in Chinese and there have been warnings about it ever since Xi announced the current CO2 peaking target in 2020.
Yet, the emphasis on peaking has only increased, with the recent announcement on promoting peaks in coal consumption and oil consumption, as well as the 2035 emission-reduction target being based on “peak levels”.
The policy answer to this is creating a system to control carbon intensity and total CO2 emissions – known as “dual control of carbon” – building on the earlier system for the “dual control of energy” consumption.
Both the State Council and the Central Committee have set the aim of operationalising the “dual control of carbon” system in the 15th five-year plan period.
However, policy documents speak of building the carbon dual-control system during the five-year period rather than it becoming operational at the start of the period.
For example, an authoritative analysis of the Central Committee’s recommendations by China Daily says that “solid progress” is needed in five areas to actually establish the system, including assessment of carbon targets for local governments as well as carbon management for industries and enterprises.
The government set an annual target for reducing carbon intensity for the first time in 2024, but did not set one for 2025, also signaling that there was no preparedness to begin controlling carbon intensity, let alone total carbon emissions, yet.
If the system is not in place at the start of the five-year period, with firm targets, there could be an opportunity for local governments to push for early increases in emissions – and potentially even an incentive for such emission increases, if they expect strict control later.
Another question is how the “dual” element of controlling both carbon intensity and absolute CO2 emissions is realised. While carbon intensity is meant to be the main focus during the next five years, with the priority shifting to reducing absolute emissions after the peak, having the “dual control” in place requires some kind of absolute cap on CO2 emissions.
The State Council has said that China will begin introducing “absolute emissions caps in some industries for the first time” from 2027 under its national carbon market. It is possible that the control of absolute carbon emissions will only apply to these sectors.
The State Council also said that the market would cover all “major emitting sectors” by 2027, but absolute caps would only apply to sectors where emissions have “stabilised”.
5. Will it limit coal-power and chemical-industry growth?
During the current five-year period, China’s leadership went from pledging to “strictly control” new coal-fired power projects to actively promoting them.
If clean-energy growth continues at the rates achieved in recent years, there will be no more space for coal- and gas-fired power generation to expand, even if new capacity is built. Stable or falling demand for power generation from fossil fuels would mean a sharp decline in the number of hours each plant is able to run, eroding its economic viability.
Showing the scale of the planned expansion, researchers from China Energy Investment Corporation, the second-largest coal-power plant operator in China, project that China’s coal-fired power capacity could expand by 300GW from the end of 2024 to 2030 and then plateau at that level for a decade. The projection relies on continued growth of power generation from coal until 2030 and a very slow decline thereafter.
The completion of the 325GW projects already under construction and permitted at the end of 2024, as well as an additional 42GW permitted in the first three quarters of 2025, could in fact lead to a significantly larger increase, if the retirement of existing capacity remains slow.
In effect, China’s policymakers face a choice between slowing down the clean-energy boom, which has been a major driver of economic growth in recent years, upsetting coal project developers, who expect to operate their coal-fired power plants at a high utilisation, or retiring older coal-power plants en masse.
Their response to these choices may not become clear for some time. The top-level five-year plan that will be published in March 2026 will likely provide general guidelines, but the details of capacity development will be relegated to the sectoral plans for energy.
The other sector where fossil fuel-based capacity is rapidly increasing is the chemical industry, both oil and coal-based. In this sector, capacity growth has led directly to increases in output, making the sector the only major driver of emissions increases after early 2024.
The expansion is bound to continue. There are more than 500 petrochemical projects planned by 2030 in China, of which three quarters are already under construction, according to data provider GlobalData.
As such, the emissions growth in the chemical sector is poised to continue in the next few years, whereas meeting China’s 2030 targets and commitments would require either reining it in and bringing emissions back down before 2030, or achieving emission reductions in other sectors that offset the increases.
The expansion of the coal-to-chemicals industry is largely driven by projects producing gas and liquid fuels from coal, which make up 70% of the capacity under construction and in planning, according to a mapping by Anychem Coalchem.
These projects are a way of reducing reliance on imported oil and gas. In these areas, electrification and clean energy offer another solution that can replace imports.
Conclusions
The five-year plans being prepared now will largely determine the peak year and level of China’s emissions, with a major impact on China’s subsequent emission trajectory and on the global climate effort.
The targets in the plan will also be a key test of the determination of China’s leadership to respect previous commitments, despite setbacks.
The country has cultivated a reputation for reliably implementing its commitments. For example, senior officials have said that China’s policy targets represent a “bottom line”, which the policymakers are “definitely certain” about meeting, while contrasting this with other countries’ loftier approach to target-setting.
Depending on how the key questions outlined in this article are answered in the plans for the next five years, however, there is the possibility of a rebound in emissions.
There are several factors contributing to such a possibility: solar- and wind-power deployment could slow down under the new pricing policy, weak targets and a deluge of new coal- and gas-power capacity coming onto the market.
In addition, unfettered expansion of the chemical industry could drive up emissions. And climate targets that limit emissions only after a peak is reached could create an incentive to increase emissions in the short term, unless counteracted by effective policies.
On the other hand, there is also the possibility of the clean-energy boom continuing so that the sector beats the targets it has been set. Policymakers could also prioritise carbon-intensity reductions early in the period to meet China’s 2030 commitments.
Given the major role that clean-energy industries have played in driving China’s economic growth and meeting GDP targets, local governments have a strong incentive to keep the expansion going, even if the central government plans for a slowdown.
During the current five-year period, provinces and state-owned enterprises have been more ambitious than the central government. Provinces can and already have found ways to support clean-energy development beyond central government targets.
Such an outcome would continue a well-established pattern, given all previous wind and solar targets have been exceeded by a wide margin.
The difference now is that a significant exceedance of clean-energy targets would make a much bigger difference, due to the much larger absolute size of the industry.
To date, China’s approach to peaking emissions and pursuing carbon neutrality has focused on expanding the supply and driving down the cost of clean technology, emphasising economic expansion rather than restrictions on fossil-fuel use and emissions, with curbing overcapacity an afterthought.
This suggests that if China’s 2030 targets are to be met, it is more likely to be through the over-delivery of clean energy than as a result of determined regulatory effort.
The post Q&A: Five key climate questions for China’s next ‘five-year plan’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: Five key climate questions for China’s next ‘five-year plan’
Governments sent fewer people to the COP30 summit in Belém than they did to any COP talks since 2014, newly-released UN data reveals, as they faced a shortage of officially-sanctioned and affordable accommodation.
While 42,618 people – including security and volunteers working at COP30 – attended the conference in the Amazon, just 7,527 of them were there with official government lanyards, known as “party badges”.
That’s the smallest number of government delegates than for any COP since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015 and around half as many as attended last year’s COP in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku.
While government attendance was well down in Brazil, other delegates from non-governmental organisations, the media and those given “party overflow” badges by governments were present in good numbers.
Many government departments have strict rules about which types of accommodation can be booked. This prevented many officials from finding rooms on websites like Booking.com or Airbnb and restricted them to the official COP30 accommodation platform, which was sanctioned by the Brazilian government.
Accommodation providers in Belém told Climate Home News that the Brazilian government’s bureaucratic restrictions prevented them from listing their properties on this platform. With the supply of rooms limited, prices on the platform were high, starting at around $240 a night.
Flights to Belém were also expensive. With the city’s airport only having a handful of international flights, many delegates had to transit through bigger Brazilian cities thousands of kilometres away like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
To combat the shortage of reasonably priced accommodation, the Brazilian government offered countries 10-15 price-capped rooms each on two cruise ships near Belém.
The government also moved the leaders’ segment of the COP to just before the start of the negotiations to ease the peak in demand for accommodation. The UN, meanwhile, increased the daily allowance it gives to negotiators from most developing countries.
The drop in attendance was most pronounced among government negotiators from Central Asia and Eastern Europe, who went to COP29 in nearby Baku in large numbers. This was only partly balanced out by an increased number of Brazilians and neighbouring Latin Americans at COP30.
The UAE and Azerbaijan, the outgoing and incoming presidencies at COP29, also sent far fewer people to COP30 than they did to COP29. The official US delegation fell from 234 at COP29 to zero at COP30, as the Trump administration dismissed the importance of the talks and decided not to send a team.
But other declines in the numbers appeared to have no particular political or geographic pattern. The delegation of the Pacific island of Nauru dropped from 17 at COP29 to one at COP30 while Zimbabwe’s fell from 181 to just 44.
Despite fears they would be worst hit by a shortage of accommodation, small island and least-developed nations did not reduce their delegation sizes more than governments did on average.
Some large wealthier countries also pared back their delegations, with Germany and China both cutting their head count by around half.
The total attendance of 42,618 people was the fourth-highest of any COP, behind the last three conferences – but less than the over 50,000 people Brazilian officials said had been expected and the 56,118 who registered to participate.
Around 11,000 were working at the conference as support staff including security guards and volunteers. The number of people at the COP taking part in the talks – comprising government officials, observers and media – was just under 32,000.
COP31 will take place in November 2026 in the Turkish tourist-resort city of Antalya, where hotel rooms and international flights are expected to be more abundant than in Belém.
The post Government attendance at COP30 was lowest in 10 years appeared first on Climate Home News.
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