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Key developments
China’s first-ever pledge to cut emissions
NEW CLIMATE TARGETS: In a video address to the UN last week, China’s president Xi Jinping personally pledged to cut his nation’s economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035, while “striving to do better”, reported state broadcaster CCTV. Sky News called it a “landmark moment”, saying that this marked the first time China “made a commitment to cut its greenhouse gas emissions”. The announced target, along with other commitments such as expanding wind and solar power capacity to more than six times 2020 levels, will be included in China’s 2035 “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, which has not yet been submitted, reported BBC News. Carbon Brief published a detailed analysis of the announcement and hosted a webinar with climate policy experts to discuss their assessments. More details of the webinar can be found below.
AMBITION CRITICISM: In an article for Just Security, Sue Biniaz, former US principal deputy special envoy for climate, wrote that “at and around the UN event, the chatter regarding the announcement was generally negative”, adding that the announced target was “even lower than expected”. EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra described China’s new climate pledge as falling “well short of what we believe is both achievable and necessary”, reported Reuters. In response, China accused the EU of “being slow to act on its own climate targets”, according to another Reuters report. The outlet said that Hoekstra’s “criticism of China’s new climate pledges shows ‘double standards and selective blindness’, China’s foreign ministry said on Friday”.
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MEDIA REACTION: Media outlets including the Guardian and the Times raised questions about the ambition of the target. Similarly, Bloomberg said it was “seen as too modest to put the nation on a path to net-zero and galvanise global climate action”. An editorial in state-run newspaper China Daily, however, called the target a “milestone in the nation’s long-term road map toward green, low-carbon development”. Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, wrote in a comment for the New York Times that China’s targets “may seem tepid”, but “beneath them is a bold wager: that steady action, powered by industrial strength and vision shielded from political volatility, will ultimately do more to contribute to the global climate effort than lofty, fickle promises ever could”.
Electricity demand growth slowed
PRESSURE DROP: The rate of growth in China’s electricity demand slowed in August, with “cooler” weather helping to “take some pressure off the grid”, reported Bloomberg, citing official data. The outlet added that electricity consumption rose 5% in August, compared with 8.6% in July and 5.4% in June. Still, China’s electricity demand in both July and August exceeded 1,000 terawatt hours – the first time this happened globally, said Chinese finance media outlet Cailianpress. According to a report by the China Electricity Council, China’s “electrification rate” has already surpassed that of “major developed economies in Europe and the US”, wrote China Energy Net.
MARKET PRICE: Two coastal provinces, Guangdong and Shandong, have used China’s new market-based pricing system for renewables to “steer clean-energy investment to the areas that suit them best, reported Bloomberg. According to the outlet, Guangdong, which is “surrounded by relatively shallow waters”, offered “generous rates to offshore wind”. In Shandong, the pricing system was used to “correct course and reduce a glut of solar power that has built up over the years”, added the outlet.
Steel to face new controls
CAPACITY CURBS: China has released a work plan for 2025-26 to “ban new steel capacity and reduce production, in the latest move to help balance supply and demand”, reported Bloomberg. The plan came after Beijing promised to cut steel output at the Two Sessions in March, according to the outlet. It also called for “significantly enhancing green, low-carbon and digital development levels” of the country’s steel sector, according to the industry news outlet BJX News. Financial media outlet Caixin said “more than 80% of China’s crude steel production capacity has completed ultra-low-emission retrofits, according to the China Iron and Steel Association”.
ETS EXPANSION: Meanwhile, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued draft allowance plans for the steel, cement and aluminium sectors for 2024 and 2025 in its national emissions trading scheme (ETS), reported Cailian Press. (The ETS was expanded to these sectors from 2024 in a draft policy, published late last year and covered by Carbon Brief. The expansion, which means that the ETS covers 60% of China’s emissions, rather than 40% previously, was confirmed in March.) Meanwhile, a report published by the State Council said that a total of 189m tonnes of carbon dioxide was traded on the ETS in 2024, according to Xinhua.
Typhoon Ragasa
DAMAGES IN ASIA: Nearly two million people in southern China had to be “relocated” after Typhoon Ragasa made landfall in Guangdong province last Wednesday, reported state news agency Xinhua. BBC News described the typhoon as the “world’s strongest storm this year” and said “a month’s worth of rain” was expected in the city of Zhuhai in one day. In the wider Asia-Pacific region, dozens of people were killed, while flights as well as businesses were also strongly affected, said the Financial Times.
CLIMATE CHANGE: Ragasa was intensified by “unusually hot oceans”, which can be linked to climate change, according to “preliminary studies” covered by the Hong Kong Free Press. “Rapid attribution” analysis by the French research group ClimaMeter concluded that cyclones such as Ragasa are around 10% wetter than they would have been in the past, added the outlet. Benjamin Horton, dean of the school of energy and environment at City University of Hong Kong, also linked Ragasa to climate change, saying extreme weather events “should not be happening at such regularity, so late in the season, of such intensity, of such high winds and of such big storm surges”, according to the SCMP.
40%
The share of China’s total solar capacity in 2024 made up by distributed photovoltaics – typically installed on rooftops – according to a report from the International Energy Agency, which said the share was up from 30% four years earlier. The report added that the “stock of electric cars grew by more than 650% over the same period”.
Spotlight
Experts: What China’s new climate pledge means for the world
Last week, president Xi Jinping announced several new pledges that will be included in China’s upcoming 2035 nationally determined contribution (NDC).
Carbon Brief held a webinar with several experts on what the new announcement means for China’s climate trajectory and the global energy transition. Below are the highlights of their answers. A recording of the webinar is available on the Carbon Brief website.
Ryna Cui, associate director and associate research professor at the University of Maryland Center for Global Sustainability
Our assessment of a plausible high ambition pathway for China [showed it] delivering a 27-31% reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions by 2035…In addition, we also model[led] a current policy pathway for China, which…also achieve[d] a 10-14% reduction…Both scenarios suggest a larger reduction compared to the 7-10% overall emission reduction target.
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Under our current policy scenario for 2035, wind and solar total installed capacity is over 4,000 gigawatt (GW). It is over 4,700 gigawatt under a high ambition [scenario]. [The target announced by Xi is for 3,600GW by 2035.]
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The non-fossil share of total primary energy…is 40% [under current policies] and 48% [under high ambition], compared to the 30% target announced [by Xi].
Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst and co-founder at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air
At [China’s] rate of clean-energy growth, there is no more space for…coal, in general, to grow. So if you were to announce targets of 20-30% reduction in carbon dioxide, then you have to recognise that there’s going to be a major downsizing of the coal industry.
That seems to be a decision that China’s leadership is still postponing. Are you going to put reins on this clean-energy boom, or are you going to accept that the coal industry has to start downsizing in a big way?
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These targets really, to me, show that the leadership was not prepared to resolve that conflict and say that coal is the one that has to give.
Anika Patel, China analyst at Carbon Brief
[In terms of what’s next,] one of the big signals…is COP30. What else will be announced that could signal China’s relative level of climate ambition?
Will there be quantitative targets placed on things like climate finance?…Will there be more announcements around south-south cooperation? What will China’s signaling on fossil fuels – especially coal – in the final COP30 outcome be?
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At the same time, we’ve got the 15th five-year plan coming up…We’re expecting a new set of overarching targets for 2026-2030, and traditionally there have always been a couple of climate targets [among the plan’s headline targets]. From that, we can expect to start seeing signals about what the level of climate ambition for the next five years will be.
Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute
There has been a very strong alignment now in the Chinese system between its decarbonisation goals and its economic development agenda…I think that strong alignment is what will propel the country to cut more carbon over time.
I also think that when you begin to realise [that]…you will then begin to realise it is not necessarily just the [state-level] EU-China climate relationship…[or] COPs that we should pay attention to. New actors are emerging.
We need to pay attention to BYD [and] CATL. We need to pay attention to [low-carbon commercial and investment activity in] Brazil…[and] Indonesia. Those factors and actors, over the next ten years or so, will begin to drive carbon-emission reduction in a more significant and meaningful way than countries’ NDCs.
Watch, read, listen
‘NEW ENERGY’: A comment on the “high-quality development” of China’s “new energy” sector was published by the Communist party’s Study Times – an official newspaper edited by the central school of the Chinese Communist party – under the byline of Wang Hongzhi, head of the National Energy Administration.
HIGH-LEVEL COMMENT: The Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily published an article under the byline Zhong Caiwen, used to indicate party leaders’ views on economic affairs, saying “green development is the defining feature of China’s high-quality economic growth”.
EXTREME WEATHER: Chinese media outlet 21st Century Business Herald conducted an interview with Xu Xiaofeng, former deputy director of the China Meteorological Administration and president of the China Meteorological Service Association, who talked about the “high intensity of extreme weather events” under climate change.
CARBON MARKETS: Ma Aimin, former deputy director of the National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, told Jiemian that China’s carbon market (ETS) needed to enhance its “trading activity” and that the next two years will be a “critical period” for voluntary carbon trading (CCERs).
New science
Development policy affects coastal flood exposure in China more than sea-level rise
Nature Climate Change
Exposure to coastal flooding in China over the 21st century will depend more on “policy decisions” than the rate of sea-level rise, according to new research. The authors combined simulations of population and land use changes with flood models that incorporate factors such as sea level rise and storm surges. They said their paper offers a “more nuanced understanding of coastal risks” than other existing assessments.
Spatiotemporal patterns and drivers of wildfire CO2 emissions in China from 2001 to 2022
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Annual CO2 emissions from forest and shrub fires in China decreased over 2001-22, but increased for cropland fires, a new study found. The analysis noted that the upward trend in cropland fire emissions is primarily in the country’s north-east and is “closely linked to region-specific straw-burning policies”. The researchers found that emissions from grassland fires remained relatively stable over the two decades assessed.
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 2 October 2025: China’s new pledge; electricity demand slows; steel overcapacity appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China Briefing 2 October 2025: China’s new pledge; electricity demand slows; steel overcapacity
The launch of the Africa Energy Bank (AEB) has been put back yet again, raising doubts about the institution’s future ability to finance fossil fuel projects – its main objective – as global lenders retreat from such investments over climate concerns, experts told Climate Home News.
The bank, which had been billed to launch in September after a series of delays, is now scheduled to begin operations in November, according to the head of the African Energy Chamber, an advocacy body for the continent’s oil and gas sector.
Even as the world aims to transition away from fossil fuels, many African leaders have made clear they want to continue exploring and extracting the continent’s large oil and gas deposits – estimated at around 125 billion barrels of crude and over 600 trillion cubic feet of gas – to boost economic development.
As a group, Africa sided with a number of powerful oil-and-gas producing nations in blocking progress on negotiations to craft a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels at last year’s UN COP30 climate talks, although some countries did individually support the proposal.
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Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks
Plans to build Africa’s second largest oil refinery in ecologically sensitive region criticised as “environmental recklessness” -
Tanzania pushed African nations to oppose fossil fuel transition at COP30
While chairing the African group at the summit, the gas-dependent nation advised the continent’s ministers to block language on transitioning away from fossil fuels
Meanwhile, major projects under development across the continent – including the 1,443-km East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and Dangote’s 700,000-barrel-per-day Kenyan refinery – show that African governments see oil and gas as playing a significant role in meeting their energy and economic needs for many years to come.
In 2022, at a gathering of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) in oil-rich Angola, ministers from its member states adopted a resolution to create the Africa Energy Bank to finance projects for the production, use and trade of oil, gas and broader energy sources.
African control over energy resources
An article on the APPO website explains that the bank was conceived as a way to overcome “disenchantment” with fossil fuels among “the international community” which it said had crystallised around the “energy transition” concept.
“If Western countries, after having long taken advantage of the energy sources they now revile to develop, can afford the luxury of abandoning them, this is not the case in Africa,” it adds, noting that many of the continent’s economies are still largely dependent on oil and gas revenues.
A separate web page about the bank, also hosted on APPO’s website, says its objectives include financing the exploration, production and refining of oil and gas, as well as supporting member states in transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources “while ensuring energy security”.
Said Addi, a former executive with Shell and energy commodities trading house Gunvor, said the new bank was judged necessary because financing for hydrocarbons from many traditional international lenders has become constrained.
In trying to fill this financing gap, Africa is not simply setting up another fund to support oil and gas, he added. “It is also an attempt to give African countries greater control over how their energy resources and infrastructure are financed,” he explained.
Nigeria to host the AEB
The energy bank – a joint initiative of APPO and the African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank) – has so far suffered several delays and is almost two years behind schedule. The initial plan was to start operations in January 2025, with Nigeria as the host country, but the bank’s opening was delayed to June of that year to allow Nigeria time to finalise the construction of the bank’s headquarters in Abuja.
After the government announced the completion of the offices in late November 2025, a new launch date was set for January 2026, which was moved back to April, June and then September. Now it has shifted again to November, raising concerns that the institution may be losing momentum.
Former Shell executive Addi said that if the capital is eventually paid in, the bank becomes operational and its first projects are commercially credible, then the delays will be regarded as normal teething troubles in setting up a multilateral institution. But, he added, scepticism will be justified if it continues to stall.
Uganda may see lower oil revenues than expected as costs rise and demand falls
Baron Lamarré, an oil and gas expert and former Petronas oil trader, said that missing “three deadlines in a row is not normal”, and warned that if the timeline slips again, “the story flips from ‘ambitious institution finding its footing’ to ‘good idea that lost momentum before it found any’.”
The Nigerian government, APPO and Afreximbank did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
The funding challenge
The Africa Energy Bank is targeting base capital of $5 billion, with plans to scale up to $120 billion within five years by mobilising private-sector funds. However, it is expected to start operations with initial seed capital of $500 million.
The funding plan is to have the 18 member countries of the APPO contribute $83 million each to the bank as equity for a combined $1.5 billion. Afreximbank, other non-APPO African countries and investors outside the continent are expected to provide the remaining $3.5 billion.
But even the initial $500 million has not been easy to mobilise. In May, APPO Secretary-General Farid Ghezali called on members to deliver on their pledges towards the startup goal before the end of June. But the delays suggest this may not have been met, with experts saying Africa may be finding it difficult to self-fund its oil and gas projects in the absence of international capital.
Lamarré said every extension of the deadline points to the fact that “raising fossil fuel capital in Africa without the majors and their financing networks is brutally hard”.
Why the global electrification agenda misses the point on Africa’s energy crisis
Since 2020, Western lenders, export credit agencies and insurers have been in steady retreat from African hydrocarbons, he said, while oil majors are divesting their African assets, handing over fields to smaller local operators whose credit ratings are not high enough to borrow cheaply.
Even capital from China and the Gulf, which has partially filled the gap, cannot match the volume, tenor or pricing that Western investors once offered, Lamarré argued.
“If mobilising the first $500 million of seed capital [for the AEB] has taken this long, that’s the clearest signal yet of how steep the climb to $120 billion looks,” he said, noting that the continent’s energy financing gap is as large as $30 billion-$45 billion per year.
Africa’s investment landscape, meanwhile, has been shifting. While foreign direct investment dropped from a 2024 peak, inflows remained roughly one-third above the continent’s long-term average in 2025, according to the 2026 World Investment Report from UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). They are concentrated in a few sectors including critical minerals needed for renewable energy technologies, battery manufacturing and advanced industrial production.
At the same time, data on global energy investment from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that fossil fuel investment in Africa has declined over the last decade.
“Trojan horse” for fossil fuels
While the Africa Energy Bank struggles to get off the ground, climate campaigners have criticised its primary aim of financing oil and gas on the continent at a time when the world is starting to move away from high-carbon fuels to cleaner alternatives.
Bhekumuzi Dean Bhebhe, founder of Africa Change Lab, described the bank as a “Trojan horse”, arguing that its focus on fossil fuel financing runs counter to the global energy transition and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 goals of sustainable development and inclusive growth.
The energy bank, he warned, “risks locking Africa into a new cycle of debt, dependency and fossil fuel entrenchment”, adding that its financing blueprint does not pave the way for a climate-resilient future. “In truth, it is to deepen the same extractive, carbon-heavy pathways that the continent should be moving away from,” he added.
Ugandan farmers use British court to try to stop East Africa oil pipeline
Kenya-based climate and energy expert Joab Okanda said the AEB’s plan to finance oil and gas is “a misplaced priority” and it should instead back clean energy in line with the policies of some of Africa’s major export markets like Europe.
In addition, the new bank could struggle to mobilise enough resources to advance large-scale oil and gas projects, he added, noting that its proposed $5-billion initial capital is equivalent to the cost of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline alone.
The AEB’s aim of backing more fossil fuels should be flipped “to support countries that are oil-dependent to start working on their transition plans”, Okanda said.
The post Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes appeared first on Climate Home News.
Launch of Africa Energy Bank delayed again in blow to oil and gas hopes
A booklet published by the UK’s opposition Conservative party includes a “cost of net-zero” that appears to have been doubled by a spreadsheet error.
The “common sense” policy document argues that “what people ultimately want is a government competent enough to solve the problems for which it takes responsibility”.
In a section that says “sophisticat[ed]…modelling” should not be a substitute for “political judgement”, the “Right Way” document disparages various estimates of the cost of net-zero.
The Conservative document then claims – incorrectly – that the government’s official adviser, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), had put the cost of net-zero at close to £1tn. It says:
“In 2020, the CCC estimated that its route to net-zero would cost £957bn.”