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China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
New export controls
‘SWEEPING’ CURBS: The Chinese government issued “sweeping export controls on rare earths and related technologies”, the Financial Times reported, with the set of new rules tightening restrictions on exports of rare earths, permanent magnets and batteries and battery components, as well as related processing technologies. Manufacturers will need licences to export any of these products that contain “even trace amounts” of China-sourced materials, it added. The move “underscores how rare earths – vital to high-performance magnets, electric vehicles [EVs], wind turbines and precision weaponry – have become a powerful geopolitical tool”, finance news outlet Caixin reported.
BATTERY BLOCKAGES?: The restrictions on batteries with an energy density higher than 300 watt-hours per kilogram, as well as a variety of battery components, “show China is keen to protect its innovations” and complicate efforts to diversify supply chains, Bloomberg reported. Caixin cited multiple analysts saying the battery threshold “primarily targets high-end nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) batteries used in aviation and defense, rather than lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries common in mass-market EVs”, noting that the “controls focus on ‘next-generation’ batteries [such as solid-state batteries]”. But Cory Combs, associate director at consultancy Trivium China, told Carbon Brief that the controls are cause for “concern”, as they “target nearly all the key components, production tools and associated tech” that newer consumer electronics, including EVs, are expected to be using. There are “open questions” on how this could affect Chinese battery manufacturers’ overseas investments and partnerships, he said, although he expected “Beijing will continue to strongly encourage battery exports and overseas investments in general”.
OPEN QUESTIONS: The restrictions give China leverage in the US-China trade dispute “ahead of a scheduled face-to-face meeting” between presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump at the end of October, Reuters said. In response to the restrictions, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent “accused China of trying to hurt the world’s economy”, the Financial Times reported, adding that in contrast, “China has blamed Washington for the escalation”. Economic news outlet Jiemian said that Europe may also be affected by the curbs, as its EV industry has “high demand for premium rare earth grades” – although it added that “specific impacts” may only become visible by early 2026. Combs told Carbon Brief that he does not think China has a “strategic interest in cutting off EU or Asian companies” from clean-energy technologies, given that it already has a competitive advantage in their manufacture. He added that the move could lead to “frictions and delays”, but “shouldn’t affect the broader EV or [wind] turbine industries too much”.
IEA revised China renewables outlook down
REFORM REVISIONS: The International Energy Agency (IEA) revised its outlook for China’s wind and solar buildout down by about 5% in its Renewables 2025 report, which the agency attributed to the country’s “shift from fixed tariffs [for wind and solar power] to competitive auctions”, Reuters said. Energy news outlet International Energy Net also covered the report, which “notes that…the financial sustainability of [wind and solar] manufacturers remains a major concern”.
EARLY ACHIEVEMENT: Jeremy Wallace, professor of China studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, wrote on LinkedIn that, despite the 5% revision, the IEA’s “main case estimate [for China] has about 2,100 gigawatts (GW) of renewables added from 2026-2030”, which would put the country “way ahead” of its new target for 3,600GW of wind and solar by 2035. Indeed, the IEA report said that China “continues to account for nearly 60% of global renewable capacity growth and is on track to reach [its 2035 target for renewable energy] five years ahead of schedule”.
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RECORD EXPORTS: Meanwhile, thinktank Ember released a report finding that China’s exports of clean-energy technology “hit a record in August, with $20bn in products shipped globally”, Bloomberg reported. Al Jazeera quoted the report saying: “Within China there is a realisation that the old development paradigm centred on fossil fuels has run its course and is not fit for 21st century realities.” State broadcaster CGTN said the findings “confirm China’s role as the primary driver of the transition” towards clean energy.
China issued draft expanding renewable quotas
BEYOND POWER: Energy news outlet BJX News reported that the Chinese government has published new draft rules to expand China’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS) – provincial quotas for consuming renewable electricity – to also cover energy demand outside the power sector. It said the draft rules divide the RPS targets into two categories: minimum renewable electricity consumption targets, covering “all types of renewable power generation”; and minimum non-electricity consumption targets, including “renewable energy applications such as heating and cooling, production of ‘green’ hydrogen, ammonia and alcohol, as well as biofuels”. The move comes as China’s RPS grows from covering power and aluminium to also include the cement, polysilicon and iron and steel sectors, as well as certain types of data centres.
FINANCE PLANS: China also plans to refine how it invests in “energy conservation and carbon reduction”, BJX News said, to better integrate “hard investments” with “soft infrastructure development”. Another BJX News report elaborated that supported projects under this programme include low-carbon projects in sectors such as power, steel, chemicals and building materials. It added that “clean coal” and coal-chemical projects, clean-energy alternatives for “coal-fired boilers and industrial kilns” and “geothermal and biomass” clean heating solutions, would also receive support.
Carbon prices hit a two-year low
CREDIT OVERSUPPLY: Carbon prices in China’s national carbon market reached the “lowest level in more than two years as the nation’s carryover rules triggered a sell-off”, with prices hitting a low of 58.8 yuan ($8.25), according to Bloomberg. It added that “prices are down almost 40% since the start of the year, weighed by a persistent oversupply and lagging demand”.
EV PRESSURES: Meanwhile, EV sales in China “hit an all-time high” in September, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported, citing data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), with a rush in purchases ahead of the expiration of EV tax breaks and consumer subsidies. A total of 826,000 EVs were sold last month, it said, up 29% from the previous year and breaking the previous record set in December 2024. State news agency Xinhua reported that sales of “new-energy vehicles”, a category including EVs, rose 35% year-on-year to 11m from January to September 2025. Bloomberg quoted CPCA secretary general Cui Dongshu saying that car dealerships urgently need financial assistance as overcapacity and intense competition pushes them to “operat[e] at cash flow negative”. Meanwhile, China plans to double EV charging capacity by 2027, “building 28m facilities nationwide”, another SCMP article said.
OVERCAPACITY ORDERS: Finally, the government has announced new measures on governing “disorderly price competition”, BJX News reported, including guiding industry associations to suggest reference costs to help “operators to set reasonable prices” and penalising companies it identifies as repeatedly violating orders. Reuters said that a state-run financial news outlet “reported…relevant authorities may release a notice on strengthening the regulation and control of solar production capacity”, adding that the article in question “did not contain further details”.
Spotlight
Only half of Chinese provinces finalise key ‘Document 136’ renewable rules
Only half of China’s provinces have finalised new rules for pricing wind and solar power, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Local governments are required to have published final plans to reform the way wind and solar power is priced in their jurisdiction before the end of this year, following the release of “Document 136” (136号文).
Carbon Brief examines China’s progress on developing the new rules. The full article, including an interactive tracker of which provinces have released their plans, is available on Carbon Brief’s website.
Central direction, local rules
In February this year, China’s central government issued a notice on “deepening market-based reform of feed-in tariffs for new energy”, also known as “Document 136”.
The document called on local governments to develop plans for new pricing mechanisms for wind and solar power. A key feature of this will be the “sustainable new-energy pricing mechanism” (新能源可持续发展价格结算机制), in which they only offer a fixed price to a set amount of new wind and solar capacity each year.
Any additional wind and solar projects would need to find buyers for their electricity on the open market.
The move is part of wider efforts to shift China’s giant electricity system towards more market-based operation.
When the policy was first released, analysts expected the rules and subsequent low auction prices to have a chilling effect on wind and solar in the short term.
But some believe that “Document 136” may strengthen China’s clean-energy industries in the long term, by forcing companies to become more innovative and competitive.
New territory
So far, Carbon Brief finds, only 18 provinces have issued finalised plans. Collectively, these provinces account for 61% of China’s energy-related emissions.
Another 10, representing 31% of emissions, have published draft plans, while Jiangsu, Tianjin and Tibet – the final 8% – have yet to publish anything.
A few provinces published finalised rules in early June, including renewable-power heavyweights Shandong and Inner Mongolia.
In a nationwide conference call at the end of August, National Energy Administration officials urged provinces to “promptly promote” concrete plans.
Eleven provinces have published finalised rules since then, with a further eight publishing draft rules, according to Carbon Brief calculations.
The delay can be attributed to the fact that local policymakers are trying to establish a completely new system of pricing power from scratch, said David Fishman, principal at energy consultancy the Lantau Group.
He told Carbon Brief that “fairly meaningful differences” can be found between the final version and earlier drafts for some provinces, indicating a high level of debate.
In September, Shandong province became the first to hold auctions for solar and wind power under the new rules.
While prices secured by the wind industry are seen as high enough to be relatively acceptable to project developers, the solar price is below the level thought to be needed to finance such developments. As such, it could “discourage” further solar investment in the province, Reuters reported.
Future additions
Analysts disagree about what impact the “Document 136” policy will have on the pace of China’s clean-energy additions.
Dr Muyi Yang, senior energy analyst for Asia at thinktank Ember, told Carbon Brief that he does not see the pricing reforms as a “signal of a structural slowdown in clean capacity [additions]”.
But Fishman noted that the pricing reforms could make it “challenging” for China to hit Xi’s new 2035 target.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) shaved 5% – or 129 gigawatts (GW) – off its outlook for China’s wind and solar growth by 2030, which it attributed to the pricing reforms.
Nevertheless, it added, China is still projected to add “nearly 2,660GW” of new renewable capacity between 2025 and 2030, reaching its 2035 wind and solar target “five years ahead of schedule”.
Watch, read, listen
AFRICAN ENERGY: The China Global South Project hosted a discussion on China’s role in shaping Africa’s energy landscape and how African governments are responding.
GENDER LENS: The Climate Watch podcast spoke with Wang Binbin, associate research professor at Peking University’s Institute for Carbon Neutrality, on intersections between climate action and gender in China.
LEADING TOGETHER?: Economic policy thinktank Bruegel published an analysis arguing that broader EU-China tensions “should not be allowed to derail joint work to cut emissions”.
ARCTIC SHIPPING: CNN examined how melting polar sea ice is “altering the map” in a way that could bring “big economic and geopolitical rewards” for China’s plans to establish shipping routes through the Arctic.
218 billion yuan
Or $30.5bn, the value of economic losses caused by “natural disasters” in the first three quarters of 2025, Jiemian reported, in coverage of a press conference by the Ministry of Emergency Management (MEM). These disasters, which included “intense” rainfall, heat and typhoons, caused 742 people to be reported dead or missing, it added. Climate change was not mentioned during the press conference.
New science
Future warming exacerbates heatwave-ozone compound extremes in China
npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
Human exposure due to “heatwave-ozone compound events” will double across by the middle of the century under “high-emissions scenario”, causing an additional 61,600 deaths nationwide, according to new research. The authors used climate models to estimate excess deaths due to heatwave-ozone compound extremes from climate change under a range of future emissions scenarios. They projected that the number of ozone pollution events in China will grow by 58% by the middle of the century, “half of which are also heatwave days”.
Nature Communications
A new study on electric vehicle charging stations found that, without policy regulation, “large-scale deployment of ultra-fast charging stations with energy storage could raise peak loads by over 70-85% by 2030 and multiply them by up to 7.5 times by 2050”. The authors used real-world charging data from a number of Chinese cities to develop simulations of various scenarios. They found that “deploying 2,000 ultra-fast charging stations in a city may increase the peak-to-valley differences of the public charging load by up to 32% daily relative to baseline cases”.
China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 16 October 2025: New export controls; IEA China projections; Provincial ‘Doc 136’ progress appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The United Nations has said the world must cut greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 6% per year to limit global warming enough to be able to return to the 1.5C goal by 2100, as decades of insufficient climate action have now made an overshoot inevitable.
In a video message accompanying the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) 2026 Emissions Gap Report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the world could no longer avoid overshooting the 1.5C limit and that the consequences were already devastating. However, he said it was still possible to return average global temperatures to 1.5C above preindustrial times by the end of the century.
“Overshoot is not surrender,” he said, adding that the report, released on Wednesday, sets out what is needed to limit warming. That entails cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035 and 69% by 2040, all compared with 2025 levels.
This implies average annual reduction rates of 5.7% for 2025-2035, higher than the pathways laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its last major scientific report, which required annual reduction rates of about 5%, UNEP said.
Paris Agreement committee names three countries snubbing it over NDCs
The more ambitious emissions reductions – which countries are still far off achieving – would put the world on the lowest-possible overshoot pathway, giving a 50% chance of limiting peak warming to 1.7–1.8C around mid-century before bringing global temperatures back to 1.5C or below by 2100, the report said. Reaching this scenario will also require carbon removal from the atmosphere, it added.
UNEP noted that if countries fully implement their current national climate plans (NDCs), they would only reduce emissions by 5-8% by 2030 and 11-15% by 2035, relative to 2025 levels.
UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said the world must not give up on the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious warming limit, adding that every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of heating above 1.5C increases climate change impacts and risks, such as the deadly floods, heatwaves and wildfires that have plagued many nations this year.
“We must pull out all the stops to minimise peak warming and return to 1.5C by the end of the century. This is possible,” she said, adding that governments must urgently implement policies that deliver rapid and sustained emissions reductions.
Climate pledges fall short
New climate pledges since last year’s report have made a negligible difference to projected emissions and warming, UNEP said. Under current policies, the world is on course for 2.8C of warming this century, while full implementation of national climate pledges and continued similar efforts would limit warming to 2.6C, the report found.
UNEP said its projections had deteriorated, attributing this to the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement under President Donald Trump and revised estimates of historical emissions.
Even with the most optimistic pledge-based scenario – which assumes countries deliver both their current national climate commitments and additional net-zero targets – warming would now only be limited to 2.1C this century, the report found.
IPCC scientists vow to press on with climate reports despite political deadlock
Speaking to journalists ahead of the report’s launch, co-author Anne Ohlhoff said the US exit from the Paris accord meant that its previous national climate target was no longer included in UNEP’s global projections. The country has also dropped its net-zero emissions goal, she said, affecting the outlook because the US is the world’s second-largest emitter.
She warned that there is still a large gap between countries’ emissions commitments for 2035 and the reductions needed under the report’s lowest-possible 1.5C overshoot scenario.
Every five years of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions at current levels pushes peak warming up by around 0.1C, she said, adding that without urgent action, it could quickly become impossible to keep peak warming below 1.7–1.8C.
Describing the emissions gap as a “leadership gap”, UN chief Guterres warned that current national climate plans and policies “fall dangerously short” of what is needed to limit warming. He urged countries to adopt credible roadmaps for transitioning away from fossil fuels, accelerate clean energy deployment and electrification, invest in electricity grids and storage, cut methane emissions and halt deforestation.
Carbon removal needed, but risky
Alongside deep emissions cuts, removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere needs to be accelerated throughout the century, the report found. The world will need to remove and permanently store about 320 billion tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere to return global temperatures to around 1.5C by 2100.
The estimated carbon removal is equivalent to around eight years of global CO₂ emissions at 2024 levels. However, UNEP cautions that removing carbon at this scale remains uncertain because of technological and socio-economic challenges.
Keywan Riahi, a contributor to the report, said carbon could be removed through nature-based approaches, such as planting forests and improving wetland management, which help ecosystems absorb carbon emissions, as well as engineering solutions that capture emissions from energy production or remove carbon directly from the air.
However, he warned that both nature-based and technological approaches face risks and might not deliver carbon removal at the scale needed. This is because nature solutions such as planetary sinks are weakening because of climate change while techno-fixes remain uncertain, he added.
“All of those technologies come with risks,” Riahi told reporters, adding that what the world needs is to try “to keep the overshoot as low as possible, so that we do not need to rely on these technologies to take CO₂ out of the atmosphere later on”.
Renewable energy supports emissions cuts
Despite the expected overshoot of the 1.5C warming limit, the UNEP Emissions Gap Report underscored that the rapid growth of renewable energy and the impact of climate policies so far show that deeper emissions cuts remain possible.
It stated that since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, global renewable electricity capacity has grown three times faster than anticipated, while solar photovoltaic (PV) deployment has increased sevenfold compared with projections made a decade ago.
Maintaining the recent pace of renewable energy expansion, alongside stronger policies, could put the world on track to meet the global goal of tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, the report said. It could also increase the share of wind and solar in electricity generation to levels consistent with the pathway that limits the overshoot of 1.5C to the lowest possible level, it added.
SE Asia speeds up plan for connected clean power grid after oil shock
Andersen said the explosion of renewable energy and slower-than-projected growth in coal energy supply showed that accelerating climate action is possible. However, she warned that progress remains insufficient, particularly in phasing down fossil fuels and halting forest loss.
“Nations must understand that the point of return begins now, not later,” she said, calling for “fast, deep and sustained emissions reductions”. She urged governments to strengthen their climate action at upcoming UN climate talks and accelerate efforts to keep the 1.5C pathway within reach.
Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, said major fossil fuel-producing countries need to take greater responsibility for reducing their emissions, saying that big polluters such as the US and Saudi Arabia need “to stop playing politics and face the scientific reality”.
“Right now they are looking at the fire, denying it exists and pouring more petrol on it, while their own citizens increasingly face searing heat, wildfires and other impacts,” he said. “Governments [need] to get on with enacting policies that cut fossil fuel use as soon as possible.”
The post UN sets steep emission cuts to reverse 1.5C overshoot by end of century appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN sets steep emission cuts to reverse 1.5C overshoot by end of century
When the Turkish COP31 presidency presented its priorities to international business leaders for the first time in New York in September, among those invited to give the private sector’s first response was Ali Koç, scion of one of Türkiye’s wealthiest families.
On stage, the vice chair of the board of Koç Holding said the family company, which weeks earlier had been announced as one of the top sponsors for the UN climate summit, can be seen as “quite exemplary” for its climate record.
What Koç did not mention was that the group’s biggest money-making arm – Türkiye’s largest oil refiner Tüpraş – plans to keep running its refineries “at maximum potential”. Nor did he say that, in 2025, both parent company and subsidiary cut their 2030 climate targets to a level they had already nearly achieved, as Climate Home News’ analysis of company records reveals.
The decision to hand Koç Holding a prominent role at COP31 – the company is also the summit’s “Global Business Partner” – has reignited a long-running controversy over the platforming of fossil fuel interests at the annual UN climate conference.
It has also thrown into question how COP sponsors are chosen and screened. The hosting agreement between the Turkish government and the UN climate secretariat (UNFCCC) says that a partner company’s “climate integrity” should be taken into account.
COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment
But how that test is applied is unclear and the process for picking sponsors remains largely opaque. The Turkish COP31 presidency has