Emissions from land-use change – including deforestation, loss of peatland and forest degradation – have been falling over the course of the 21st century.

The latest Global Carbon Budget report, formally published in May in the journal Earth System Science Data, notes a “statistically significant decrease” in land-use change emissions since the late 1990s.

The 21st-century decline in land-use emissions has accelerated in recent years, with the report highlighting a “steep drop” after 2015.

Writing for Carbon Brief in November 2025, climate scientists Dr Zeke Hausfather and Prof Pierre Friedlingstein noted that land-use emissions in 2025 had decreased by “around 32% compared to their average in the 2000s”.

Via six charts, Carbon Brief explores how – and why – land-use emissions have fallen over the past quarter of a century as fossil-fuel emissions have continued to climb.

How have land-use emissions changed?

Deforestation, forest degradation, loss of peatlands and harvesting trees for wood all release carbon into the atmosphere.

Collectively, these emissions are known as land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) emissions, referred to here as land-use emissions.

Each year, global land-use emission trends are analysed in the Global Carbon Budget report. The report, produced by dozens of scientists, documents how human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are changing over time.

Key findings from the annual report are released each year in the autumn, before being published formally in an academic journal the following year following a peer-review process.

(For more on the findings of the 2025 report, read Carbon Brief’s summary.)

The latest edition of the Global Carbon Budget report notes that, in the four decades to 1999, net CO2 emissions from land-use change remained “relatively constant”, sitting at around 6.6bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) per year.

However, since the late 1990s, global land-use emissions have been falling.

The 2025 report estimates that land-use emissions over 2015-24 averaged at 5GtCO2 a year. This is around 23% lower than the average over 1995-2004 and 19% lower than 2005-14, it says.

In contrast, global emissions from fossil fuels and cement have increased every decade since 1959, rising from an average of 11GtCO2 in the 1960s to 35.9GtCO2 over 2015-24, it says.

“Preliminary data” included in the report suggests that land-use emissions in 2025 clocked in lower than their 2014-25 average, at 4.1GtCO2, as fossil-fuel and cement emissions reached a new high of 38.1GtCO2.

(For more on how land-use emissions are calculated, see: Why are estimates of land-use emissions uncertain?)

The chart below shows how land-use emissions have been falling in the 21st century and have helped to temper the overall rise of human-caused emissions.

Why have land-use emissions fallen?

The Global Carbon Budget attributes falling land-use emissions since the late 1990s to decreasing emissions from deforestation, in particular “permanent deforestation”.

Permanent deforestation refers to the complete removal of trees for the conversion of forest to another land use, such as agriculture, mining or the construction of towns and cities. This sets it apart from other forms of deforestation, such as logging and rotational farming, where the canopy is removed on a more temporary basis.

The Global Carbon Budget also points to “increasing [CO2] removals” from forest regrowth as a reason for falling land-use emissions since the turn of the century.

(For more on the countries and policies that have driven these changes, see: Which countries are behind falling land-use emissions? and: Which countries are leading on forest regrowth?)

Looking at more recent trends, the report attributes a “steep drop” in land-use emissions in the decade since 2015 to the “combined effect” of a “peak” in peat fire emissions in 2015, as well as a “long-term decline” in deforestation emissions in many countries over 2010-20.

The chart below shows how deforestation and forest growth have been responsible for the bulk of change to land-use emissions over the 21st century.

Over 2015-24, the sequestration of CO2 through reforestation and afforestation efforts offset two-thirds of deforestation emissions, according to the Global Carbon Budget report.

Specifically, it notes that deforestation was responsible for an average of 6.96GtCO2 of emissions each year over 2015-24. Forest growth, on the other hand, removed 4.76GtCO2 a year.

Just under half – 2.2GtCO2 – of carbon removals over 2015-24 was from afforestation and reforestation efforts and the remaining 2.56GtCO2 were driven by forest regrowth from shifting cultivation cycles, it says.

Forest regrowth from shifting cultivation refers to the recovery of a forest after a plot has been farmed for a short period and then abandoned.

This is shown in the chart below below, which shows how carbon removals from forest regrowth have offset emissions from deforestation.

In the near-term, the Global Carbon Budget attributes its projection of a drop in land-use emissions between 2024 and 2025 to the “end of El Niño conditions”.

(The naturally occurring weather phenomenon typically leads to the drying out of peatlands in the tropics and causes more planned deforestation fires to burn out of control.)

Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, director of the Global Carbon Budget office and a professor at the University of Exeter, tells Carbon Brief there is “no indication” of what might happen in the future, but adds that land-use emissions trends over the 21st century are “going in the right direction”. He says:

“If you are optimistic, you hope the trend will not reverse and start increasing again. But we don’t know for sure. The assumption, given current land policies across the world, is that deforestation should continue to decline.”

Which countries are behind falling land-use emissions?

The countries that contributed the most to land-use emissions over 2015-24 were Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Indonesia, according to the Global Carbon Budget.

It notes that these three countries together contributed more than half – 57% – of global land-use emissions.

Over the first quarter of the 21st century, falling land-use emissions in Brazil and Indonesia have combined with increased afforestation and reforestation in China to drive down overall land-use emissions, according to the Global Carbon Budget.

This is illustrated in the chart below, which shows how China’s land-use emissions have dropped below zero, as Brazil and Indonesia’s emissions have declined.

Friedlingstein says that the decline in land-use emissions since the 2000s has been “primarily driven by a decline in deforestation in Brazil”.

He tells Carbon Brief that tree clearance in the South American country rose in the 1990s then started to fall after a peak in the 2000s:

“There was a bit of up and down – mainly due to politics and who was in charge in Brazil – [whether the president] was [Luiz Inácio] Lula [da Silva] or [Jair] Bolsonaro. But the long-term trend in Brazil is a decline in deforestation due to forest protection policies.”

These policies included a 2004 “action plan” for the prevention and control of deforestation in the Amazon, a 2006 soy moratorium, which banned the purchasing and financing of soya produced in deforested areas of the Amazon, as well as the expansion of protected areas across Brazil during the second half of the 2000s.

Prof Julia Pongratz, a professor of physical geography and land-use systems at the University of Munich and contributor to the Global Carbon Budget, says Brazil is the “single most important contributor to the early-2000s global land-use change emissions peak and subsequent decline”.

She says that the largest contributor to an “acceleration” in the decline of global land-use emissions in the past decade has been Indonesia, which she notes has “rewetted more peatland area since 2017 alone than Europe in its entire history”.

Around the world, peatlands are exploited and damaged by humans for a range of purposes, including converting the land for agriculture and peat extraction for horticulture and fuel. Peatland wetting refers to the process of restoring water levels in drained peatlands in order to return them to their natural, waterlogged conditions, which allows for peat formation and carbon storage.

Another reason for Indonesia’s downward trend in land-use emissions is that there have been fewer spikes in emissions caused by fires related to human land-use activities over the last decade, says Pongratz.

Emissions from ecosystem fires are not always counted towards national and regional land-use emissions budgets, which estimate the sum of human-caused emissions. Deforestation fires and those related to peatland drainage are included, whereas fires caused by droughts and heatwaves are not.

Pongratz says it is “hard to separate natural and land-use drivers completely”, given that deforestation and peatland fires often “get out of control and cause spikes in emissions” during dry El Niño conditions.

(For more on uncertainties in land-use emissions data, see: Why are estimates of land-use emissions uncertain?)

Pongratz notes that international trade regulations that have helped to drive down land-use emissions in Brazil and Indonesia have had a lesser effect in the DRC, where the root drivers of deforestation are different:

“Emissions in the DRC have increased, then stayed high in the last two decades. This is partly related to population growth and expanding smallholder and subsistence farming.

“The picture is different in Brazil and Indonesia, which are much more driven by export; international regulations aiming at curbing deforestation thus have larger effects in these countries.”

Which countries are leading on forest regrowth?

Reforestation and afforestation schemes that draw down carbon from the atmosphere have helped to reduce the overall emissions from land-use change over the course of the 21st century.

As noted above, the 2025 Global Carbon Budget report highlights how the removal of carbon from forests offset two-thirds of deforestation emissions over 2015-24. 

The report says that China, the EU and US account for the highest levels of carbon sequestration from reforestation and afforestation, collectively drawing 1.1GtCO2 per year over the 2015-24 period.

This, it says, is “partly related to expanding forest area as a consequence of the forest transition in the 19th and 20th centuries and subsequent regrowth of forest”.

The chart below, which draws from the latest edition of the “state of carbon dioxide removal” report, shows how carbon uptake by forests has increased over the last 20 years in a number of countries, most notably in China.

In China, a raft of reforestation and improved land management policies were introduced in the 1990s which have led to the rehabilitation of tens of millions of hectares of forests. Research has shown the schemes have significantly increased the country’s uptake of carbon and switched its land from a carbon source to a carbon sink.

The Global Carbon Budget highlights that substantial carbon removal from reforestation and afforestation occurred in other regions, such as Brazil, Russia and Indonesia. However, in these regions, emissions from deforestation and other land-use changes “dominate”, it says.

Why are estimates of land-use emissions uncertain?

Tallying the world’s emission from land-use change is complex.

The Global Carbon Budget estimates an uncertainty range of 2.6GtCO2 per year for its average annual global land-use emissions figure for 2015-24 – more than half the overall figure of 5GtCO2.

To calculate overall land-use emissions for the annual Global Carbon Budget report, researchers create an average from three land-use models: BLUE, OSCAR and LUCE.

These models combine satellite and statistical information on land cover and land-use changes from global and regional datasets.

Pongratz, who is involved in the LUCE model, explains that scientists can measure the exchange of CO2 between land and atmosphere, but are not able to determine whether CO2 is being released or sequestered from a managed area as a result of human activities or other climate or environmental factors. She continues:

“For this, you need to turn to modelling, where you can isolate drivers – and, again, models are uncertain and the land-use input imperfect. This is why we use all available model estimates – three at the moment.”

The Global Carbon Budget highlights that its three different models treat different components of the land-use emissions “budget” differently.

While models agree “relatively well” about emissions from permanent deforestation, they take different approaches in their approach to shifting cultivation patterns, which increases both emissions and removals, as well as wood harvesting, it says.

Moreover, it notes that land-use emissions and removals occur on different timelines. While carbon removals generated by forest growth and soil recovery are “slow”, there is an “instantaneous component” to emissions from deforestation, it says.

(For more on the challenges in analysing changes to the global carbon cycle, see Carbon Brief’s recent in-depth interview with Prof Philippe Ciais, one of the world’s leading experts on land-use emissions.)

The Global Carbon Budget notes that its confidence in its 2025 projection for overall land-use emissions remains “low” given that the figure is based on deforestation, degradation and peat fire emissions, which are “only a proxy” for land-use change.

The report notes that 2023 is the final year in which it calculates land-use emissions directly from land-use statistics across all three bookkeeping models. For more recent years, full statistics are not yet available across the models and scientists instead turn to short-term proxies.

related

Factcheck: No, Europe is not having its ‘quietest’ year for wildfires

30.07.2026

Extreme weather

World falling short on 22 of 23 nature targets for 2030, says draft UN report

29.07.2026

International policy

Analysis: 84% of nations miss deadline to identify ‘nature-harming’ subsidies by 2025 

28.07.2026

International policy

COP30: Could Brazil’s ‘Tropical Forest Forever’ fund help tackle climate change?

05.11.2025

COP30 Belém

The post Why land-use emissions have fallen by a third this century – in six charts appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Why land-use emissions have fallen by a third this century – in six charts

After a five-year long legal battle, the Constitutional Court of South Africa has blocked Shell and local partner Impact Africa’s permit to explore for oil and gas off the country’s East Coast, in a landmark victory for local communities and civil society.

“Today’s judgment makes me feel very happy and proud that the ocean is not for profit for mining companies,” said East Coast resident and environmental campaigner Siyabonga Ndovela.

The verdict culminates a years-long process in which non-profits Sustaining the Wild Coast, Natural Justice, Greenpeace Africa, and others took legal action against Shell, Impact Africa and the South African government for failing to consult affected communities – a legal requirement in the country.

The Constitutional Court ruled that Shell and Impact Africa had not complied with resource governance law, had failed to meaningfully conduct public consultation and had failed to consider the impact on climate change, cultural rights, livelihoods and ecological harm.

The ruling references last year’s landmark advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, which states that countries have a legal duty to prevent and repair damage to the climate system. The South African judges argued climate change “transcends borders” and that states’ obligations “must be understood within the broader framework of international law.”

“This case must also be understood against the backdrop of well-documented struggles by coastal communities to protect their land, marine resources and ways of life in the face of extractive activities that they believe threaten their very existence,” wrote Justice Narandran Kollapen.

The Constitutional Court found that the exploration right had been unlawfully granted by the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources.The ruling upholds a 2022 regional court decision against Shell and overturns a 2024 appeal that allowed the company to conduct fresh public consultations under the original exploration right. Today’s decision means the right, initially granted in 2014, must be set aside.

Celebrating the decision, Sherelee Odyar, oil and gas campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, told Climate Home News that the court confirmed “serious failures” in the awarding of exploration rights to Shell and Impact Africa, which “can not simply be corrected later”.

The Wild Coast is a biodiversity hotspot which has been conserved over generations by coastal communities who rely on the ocean and land. “Our land and sea are central to our livelihoods and our way of life. Over generations we have conserved them, and they have conserved us,” reads the founding statement in the case. 

A Shell spokesperson said it noted the ruling, responding that “we are committed to responsible offshore exploration, meaningful stakeholder engagement and environmental stewardship.”

The Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication.

“Renewed strength” for communities

The ruling adds to a series of legal challenges brought by civil society groups against oil companies and the government as South Africa has expanded oil and gas development since 2014 under Operation Phakisa, a plan aimed at “unlocking the economic potential of the oceans”.

On the West Coast, Walter Steenkamp, Chair of Aukotowa Fisheries Cooperative, which is involved in a separate ongoing legal action against TotalEnergies, said that “today’s court case gave me renewed strength.”

The case could also set a precedent for future oil developments, said Alessandro Mazzi, legal governance researcher at the University of Wageningen. He added that the verdict “sends a strong signal to investors that where projects affect people’s land, livelihoods and environment, meaningful consultation and genuine ecological assessment are an integral part of responsible investment”.

Janet Solomon, coordinator of advocacy group Oceans not Oil, said that the Court’s emphasis on democratic participation, culture, livelihoods and the health of future generations in handing down the verdict signals a shift in jurisprudence on environmental governance, saying that this focus “may prove to be the judgment’s most enduring legacy.”

The post South Africa’s top court blocks Shell’s offshore oil exploration right appeared first on Climate Home News.

South Africa’s top court blocks Shell’s offshore oil exploration right

China has published a new five-year plan for coal, the latest in a slew of important policy documents for the country’s energy transition.

The 15th five-year plan for the development of the coal industry was published by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration (NEA) on 10 August, covering the period 2026-2030.

This is a key period, covering the years building up to China’s pledge to peak its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions “before 2030”.

Government-affiliated organisations had previously mooted the possibility of coal consumption peaking before 2027.

However, the new plan does not set a specific, government-endorsed year for peaking coal consumption, instead including a broader goal to peak use of the fuel in this five-year period.

It also discusses the “green and low-carbon transition” of the coal industry, coal-related methane emissions and the “clean and efficient use” of the fuel.

But, in general, the plan emphasises the importance of coal in China’s energy system and focuses on the systems underpinning its production.

Analysts tell Carbon Brief that the plan confirms a “broader trend” – driven by the conflict in the Middle East – in which coal’s role in China as a “cheap and secure” source of energy is reinforced – instead of plotting a phase-down or transition for the industry.

Nevertheless, as the deadline for peaking CO2 emissions looms, the plan does warn the sector of the need to diversify into other industries – including clean energy and chemicals – as coal consumption peaks.

Below, Carbon Brief looks closer at what the plan means for China’s use of coal over the next five years and how it relates to wider climate targets.

What does the plan say about peaking coal?

Five-year plans are a key tool in Chinese governance, used to guide economic and social development across the economy.

The plan for coal is the latest topic-specific document to address climate and energy matters within the 15th five-year plan period of 2026-30. It is subordinate to the overarching 15th five-year plan, which covers China’s broad socio-economic strategy.

Other topic-specific plans for the period cover climate change, developing a “new-type energy system” and renewable energy, among other topics.

The coal plan opens by stating that coal is a “foundational [source of] energy” for China:

“[Coal is] vital to the national economy, people’s livelihoods and national energy security, and plays a crucial role in providing foundational support and systemic regulation within the energy supply system.”

However, the plan also covers the 15th five-year plan period (2026-2030), the final five-year period before China is expected to have peaked its carbon emissions.

The 15th five-year plan period marks a time of “significant transformation” for the coal industry, the plan says.

Policy documents issued in April 2026 called for the “strict control” of fossil fuels and created a framework for local governments to be graded on coal use in their region.

Coal has traditionally been the largest source of energy in China and is responsible for around 80% of its emissions.

But its role is gradually being superseded by non-fossil energy, which accounted for more than half of the country’s power mix in 2025. In the first half of 2026, coal supplied less than 50% of power generation, while its share of total energy consumption fell to 51.4%, as shown below.

The five-year plan for coal signals “continuity” of China’s aim of “safeguarding energy security while advancing the low-carbon transition”, says Kevin Tu, non-resident fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

Another key factor behind the plan is concerns from policymakers around energy security, exacerbated by the conflict in the Middle East.

In an article published in early August, the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily noted the “severe volatility” the war has created in energy markets, adding that “China’s energy system has withstood these shocks”.

It quoted NEA head Wang Hongzhi stating in a press conference that “coal is [China’s] greatest source of confidence in ensuring a stable energy supply”.

The conflict will “reinforce coal’s role in China’s energy system”, both as a source of energy and as a feedstock for commodities, Li Shuo, China climate hub director at the Asia Society Policy Institute, tells Carbon Brief.

The plan outlines a number of aims to be achieved by 2030, starting with a goal to “further strengthen” the coal industry’s “ability to be a ‘bottom-line guarantee’”.

The other targets in the plan, to be achieved by 2030, include:

• Peaking coal consumption;
• “Basically establishing” a modern coal-industrial system;
• Optimising the “layout” of coal production and development;
• Increasing the proportion of “high-quality, advanced” coal-production capacity;
• “Clearly improving” levels of “safe, green development” and “clean, efficient use” of coal;
• Increasing the share of coal produced by “large-scale, modernised coal mines” to 87%;
• Developing a diversified coal-based industrial structure;
• Improving mechanisms to ensure a “dynamic balance” between supply and demand.

The large share of China’s CO2 emissions that come from coal and China’s carbon-peaking and neutrality targets are not the main focus of the five-year plan.

“This is clearly neither a coal phase-out nor phase-down plan,” Tu tells Carbon Brief. He adds that it grants China “considerable flexibility…over the pace of the transition”.

A pledge to peak coal consumption during the five-year plan period is reiterated several times in the document. Notably, the plan says that China will “promote coal consumption successfully reaching a peak”.

This, it says, is “guided” by China’s “dual-carbon” goals for peaking and neutrality, but is also based on the premise of “guaranteeing the secure supply of energy”

However, the plan does not provide a government-endorsed target year for peaking consumption.

State-affiliated organisations, such as Xinhua, have suggested that coal consumption is “expected to peak around 2027”. Independent analysis has stated that emissions from coal consumption may have already peaked.

“The absence of a 2027 deadline is significant, but I would be careful not to over-interpret it,” Tu tells Carbon Brief.

While a 2027 peak for coal remains possible, in his view, it is dependent on factors such as “electricity-demand growth, renewable generation, industrial activity, weather conditions and coal demand from the chemical sector”.

Similarly, Li believes that it will be “market and technological progress”, rather than state directives, that determine exactly when coal consumption and emissions will peak.

“Beijing’s regulatory interventions, if any, will be limited to making sure the peaking timelines do not blow past 2030,” he says.

What does the plan say about China’s coal production?

The plan does not set a concrete target for coal production during the five-year plan period. In contrast, total coal production targets for 2015 and 2020 had been set in the 12th and 13th five-year plans.

The plan also reduces a target for “reserve production” capacity, which was first announced in 2024.

The plan reiterates that, by 2030, China should “establish a coal reserve-production capacity of 100m metric tonnes or more per year”. This was first mentioned in the 15th five-year plan for building a “new-type energy system”, published in June.

Despite China’s rapid buildout of renewable energy, reserve coal capacity is necessary, argues state news agency Xinhua. It says that, to balance the variability of renewable energy, coal will shift to “playing a supporting and regulating role to safeguard energy supply”.

Nevertheless, the new reserve goal is lower than the target of 300m tonnes of coal set when China first announced the establishment of the system in 2024.

“Overall, this five-year plan is targeted at the coal industry, not the energy transition”, says Yang Biqing, energy analyst at Ember, although the energy transition and the peaking of coal consumption form the overarching context for the plan.

Provinces in northern China will continue to provide the majority of China’s coal, according to the plan.

It reiterates a pledge from the new-type energy five-year plan that China will continue building “coal-supply security bases” in the provinces of Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi and Xinjiang. It says these bases will supply more than 80% of China’s coal by 2030.

This does not indicate a change in direction, as coal production is already increasingly concentrated in northern China. In 2025, 82% of China’s coal came from these four provinces.

New or expanded coal mines in these provinces – with the exception of southern Xinjiang – must have a minimum annual production capacity of 1.2m tonnes, says the plan.

This is an “important signal”, Tu tells Carbon Brief. He notes that the plans suggest that “China’s coal transition is not simply about reducing the quantity consumed”, but also about creating a “more concentrated, efficient, flexible and resilient” coal system.

The plan also calls for a more centralised approach to managing coal. It states that in 2026-2030, any new production capacity must be “included in the single ledger” – essentially meaning that it must be approved by the central government – before it can be implemented.

Yang tells Carbon Brief that this could indicate that the government is trying to prevent a potential “rush” to get new capacity approved as coal consumption starts to plateau and fall.

What does the plan say about coal’s greenhouse gas emissions?

The plan includes sections on the need to “accelerate” the low-carbon transition of the industry, as well as the “clean and efficient use” of coal.

The former section largely focuses on the production and processing of coal, while the latter addresses emissions associated with its consumption.

Suggested policies include promoting energy efficiency, water conservancy and electrification, coupled with greater use of renewable-energy sources at coal mines.

In addition to promoting a successful peaking of coal consumption, the plan also re-affirms existing policies around promoting energy efficiency and carbon-emission reduction.

It calls for “accelerate energy conservation and consumption reduction in key coal-consuming industries”, largely through methods already established by existing policies.

This includes phasing out inefficient coal-fired equipment, replacing coal-fired equipment with “clean energy” alternatives, reducing use of “dispersed coal” and promoting clean heating sources such as distributed solar heating and waste heat utilisation.

Tom Wang, executive director of People of Asia for Climate Solutions, describes the plan as “more of a coal exploration plan, rather than a coal transition plan”. He tells Carbon Brief that while several policies call for “green” or “smart” development, the plan does not address the greenhouse gas emissions underpinning each step of coal extraction, processing and combustion.

Another major focus is on utilisation of coalbed methane, a significant source of China’s methane emissions.

China will “implement work plans to increase coalbed-methane reserves and production”, the plan says, including a “rapid ramp-up” of production in deep coalbed-methane sites.

Affixed to the main five-year plan is an appendix further detailing plans for coalbed methane.

It notes that utilising coalbed methane has “multiple benefits”, such as improving safety, “increasing the supply of clean energy” and reducing emissions. [Methane is a fossil fuel.]

The government is targeting 26bn cubic metres of coalbed-methane production and 6.5bn cubic metres of mine-gas utilisation by 2030, it says.

At least 18bn cubic metres will be sourced from the Ordos Basin, a region spanning several northern provinces, according to an action plan published by the NEA.

In its coverage of the Ordos action plan, the state-run newspaper China Daily said that developing coalbed methane is a “vital strategic move to optimise [China’s] energy mix and ensure domestic gas supply”.

Reporting by Xinhua and economic news outlet Jiemian said that coalbed methane could help China become an “energy powerhouse” and “secure [its] energy self-sufficiency”, respectively.

In addition, the coal industry will “steadily advance methane-emission control” and “actively participate in the reduction of non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions”, according to the appendix.

However, Sun Xiaopu, senior China counsel at the thinktank Institute For Governance and Sustainable Development, tells Carbon Brief, the plan “does not establish an absolute methane-emissions reduction target”.

She notes that the implications for emissions may only become clear as implementation frameworks for meeting the utilisation targets are released.

How does the plan tell coal companies to evolve?

Despite reaffirming the importance of coal, the plan emphasises that the overall role of the fuel in China will change. It adds that the coal industry must adapt to this changing reality.

As the coal industry “modernises”, coal companies must “strengthen management” of mine closures and exit plans. They must also plan for a “smooth transition” and “prudently handle” workforce relocation, debt resolution and ecological restoration, it says.

Companies should also be supported in expanding into industries such as “power, new energy and chemicals”, according to the plan.

A number of major coal producers, as well as at least one oil giant, have already established wings focused on “new energy”.

But the focus on the use of coal to make chemicals is one of the “most consequential parts of the plan”, says Tu.

China must promote the shift to coal being used “equally” as a fuel and a feedstock, the plan says.

The plan urges policymakers to push through “construction of strategic coal-to-oil and gas bases”

The chemicals sector is China’s fastest source of emissions growth, although it remains well behind power and other industries in terms of total emissions.

Tu notes that the plan calls on the coal-chemicals industry to decarbonise production, such as through low-carbon power, green hydrogen and carbon capture, utilisation and storage.

As such, he says, the policy signal is “not to exit coal chemicals, but to make them more efficient, higher-value and potentially less carbon-intensive”.

Li echoes this, telling Carbon Brief that the sector is “likely to receive a major boost from the conflict in Iran”. He adds:

“We will probably see further capacity expansion in the sector and I doubt environmental arguments will convince Chinese authorities to take a different approach.”

related

Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change?

06.08.2026

China policy

Q&A: What does China’s 15th ‘five-year plan’ for renewables mean for climate change?

29.07.2026

China policy

Interview: Dr Sun Yixian on his new database tracking Chinese climate ‘leadership’

09.07.2026

China policy

Q&A: What do China’s provincial five-year plans say about climate and energy?

18.06.2026

China policy

The post Q&A: What does China’s 15th five-year plan for coal mean for climate action? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Q&A: What does China’s 15th five-year plan for coal mean for climate action?