Published

1 year ago

May 30, 2024

Alice Rush

As part of the UN climate process, developed countries have been encouraged to donate “international climate finance” to help developing countries cut emissions and prepare for climate disasters.

There has been a significant debate around whether China, as an increasingly wealthy developing country, should also contribute.

China’s stance remains controversial. The country did not make a pledge to the “loss-and-damage fund” established at COP28, but has provided alternative climate funding through its South-South Climate Cooperation Fund and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Ahead of next week’s Bonn conference – where delegates are expected to negotiate climate finance – Carbon Brief has interviewed Li Shuo, head of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), on the prospects for China’s climate contribution.

Through talking to various climate experts, including Chinese government officials and consultants, Li examines the motives behind China’s current policy and strategy.

He tells Carbon Brief that focusing on China’s ability to encourage investment that increases use of affordable low-carbon energy solutions worldwide could be one way to encourage the nation to play a greater role in international climate finance.

The wide-ranging discussion with Li covered possible outcomes from this year’s COP29, prospects for US-China alignment, barriers and incentives for China to increase its financial contribution, and more:

On the climate finance debate: “This is indeed one of the most controversial issues…that sees very strong division between the global south and the global north.”
On China’s dominance of low carbon technology: “I actually hope this could be one solution to the…NCQG [new collective quantified goal] question…It could be a solution based on which we can find a path forward.”
On EU and US concerns: “I doubt the NCQG will ever be as explicit as China committing to support developing countries to buy China-made products…The decision will be made in more general terms; general enough to not agitate the US and the EU.”
On improving the BRI as a climate finance mechanism: “The question is what role can China play to facilitate a better environment for its own engagement… That role will increasingly require China to engage…with the policy framework of those recipient countries.”
On ‘inviting’ negotiation strategies: “Messages that are crafted in a more inviting way will probably work better…If your framing is ‘China needs to pay’, or ‘we believe China is ready’ or ‘China is responsible’, then I think politically this will become very difficult.”
On multilateral cooperation: “[Our research has looked at] whether trilateral cooperation would be possible – if not solving all the problems, at least a few demonstration projects that will convey a political signal that we’re all in…There could be areas where China and other traditional donor countries can complement each other.”

On US-China tensions: “[COP29] is probably the best recipe for huge tension between the US and China. Given the agenda set for this COP: it is finance, right? …This one is particularly controversial. If one side or both sides want to weaponise this issue, they can find all the ways to weaponise it and blow up the COP.”

On the new US and Chinese climate envoys’ relationship: “The two envoys are, I think, also committed to learn from what has served this relationship in the past, including by building a personal relationship.”
On future US-China climate cooperation: “This dynamic…also puts the bilateral climate relationship firmly into the pattern of the rest of the bilateral relationship…when they meet, there is normally a set of standard talking points without too many substantive agreements, let alone progress.”
On the need for political courage: “[Climate change] is a time-bound, global, environmental crisis that requires real solutions…We still haven’t seen the political courage to set this issue aside.”

The interview is reproduced in full, below, with some editing for clarification. An abridged version of the transcript has been published in China Briefing, Carbon Brief’s fortnightly email newsletter focusing on climate and energy developments relating to China. (Sign up for free.)

Carbon Brief: At the upcoming COP29 climate talks [in Baku in November], countries will be negotiating a new climate finance target to replace the current $100bn goal for developed countries. As the world’s biggest emitter, China is facing growing calls to start contributing. How is China responding to these calls?

Li Shuo: I think we are expecting a pretty heated debate at COP29. This is indeed one of the most controversial issues…that sees very strong division between the global south and the global north. And, of course, China is in this unique position: it is still firmly in the developing country camp, but, at the same time, it has become one of the largest economies and the largest emitters in the world. So with that, you know, there’s this argument that China should shoulder more responsibility internationally, including by providing future climate finance.

The geopolitical environment is definitely not helping that transition: the tension between China and the west, and also this long-standing deficit on the part of the developed countries to deliver what they have promised. In addition to that, China’s domestic political and economic situation – let’s just say, it’s not at a particularly helpful moment for that transition to happen, [with] the domestic economic slowdown and so on. So we see a lot of risk factors. There is a critical need for other countries and China to work out, to align, ahead of COP29 on this issue. I think the next few months will be very important.

CB: We have seen the US president Joe Biden ramp up tariffs across China’s “new three” types – electric vehicles, solar products and lithium-ion batteries. Some in China might argue that they are contributing to the energy transition by providing affordable, clean energy technology and, therefore, they shouldn’t be pressured to scale up climate finance. Do you think that this could be one of the arguments made by the Chinese negotiators against greater ambition at COP29?

LS: Well, I actually hope this could be one solution to the $100bn – or $1tn – NCQG [new collective quantified goal] question. I actually genuinely see that it could be a solution based on which we can find a path forward for China, but also the rest of the world.

The reason I say this is, indeed, as you outlined, in addition to China’s emission portfolio, the country also happens to be the biggest solution provider when it comes to low-carbon products. Of course, there are increasing political controversies around China’s position in this regard, in particular between the US and China. But, I think, if you were China, what you want to achieve is, of course, to make sure that you can continue to sell those low-carbon solutions to the rest of the world.

So I would argue it actually works in China’s self-interest to make sure that they can facilitate the deployment of renewable energy in the global south. And, that way, I think it helps address the geopolitical problem, the so-called overcapacity [problem]. I mean, they realise that overcapacity always has two sides: oversupply and under-deployment. If you can tackle the same problem from the under-deployment side, that’s helping you geopolitically, but that’s also helping your businesses, that’s helping your companies in real ways. How do you do that? I think a role to provide finance or facilitate investment in developing countries is the way to achieve that. And if China can play a role in this regard, at the bare minimum, it is helping its own companies.

CB: Do you think that that would be politically viable? It would require the EU and the US signing off on saying: “Even though we’re launching investigations and tariffs into Chinese companies domestically, we support China’s global deployment of the ‘new three’ types.”

LS: I doubt it will be. I mean, if you’re talking about the NCQG package, I doubt the NCQG will ever be as explicit as China committing to support developing countries to buy China-made products…The decision will be made in more general terms; general enough to not agitate the US and the EU. In my mind, of course the NCQG discussion is still an ongoing one, but you might be familiar with this “onion” [structure] approach, a kind of multi-layer package. You have a core: public international finance. The controversial issue there is you will have a number, but who will be accountable for that number? That’s one thing. Then the second [layer] might be some sort of investment facilitation, if you will, and that’s where I think China can play a role.

I think it is in that layer that I feel like this is actually the interesting ongoing geopolitical development. You can actually make a stronger argument [now] than before to convince China that they should really play a role in that second layer, because it is helping its trade and investment facilitation, in essence. It is helping them to sell to the rest of the world. So they should be willing to play a role there. As long as that provision is not framed as sensitive to the West, I think there is an area where the two sides can converge. Because at the end of the day, developed countries are also trying to gain more money, so that they can be a little bit less liable on the public international finance side. So there might be a point of convergence.

CB: While often not widely recognised, China has contributed climate funding via both its “South-South Climate Cooperation Fund” and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). How significant is this funding?

LS: I think here, the number is even secondary – to both China and its international counterparts. I think the most important point here is to realise that China can actually contribute internationally to the decarbonisation agenda, and China is already doing so. So the political question then is not whether China will do it or not, but how can we make sure [it plays] a larger role? I think that is the key political point…You have a base to build on, we’re not talking about ‘ground zero’.

But when you look at the details of what China has been doing, I think, number one, there has been real investment and financial support to the global south, primarily through the BRI. The BRI now is going into a second phase which will [have more emphasis on] quality and sustainability. I hope that actually will help China to do more to help developing countries to scale up their renewable energy development. I think the second part that China has been doing is more kind of public finance – south-south cooperation and so on. There, we didn’t do the number crunching, but if you look at [climate thinktank] E3G‘s report, their argument is that there has been a gap – a huge gap – between what China has committed to in the past and what it has actually delivered.

In addition to that, we understand that the existing support and projects are done on a rather ad-hoc basis, lack a coherent strategy and are also constrained by various domestic policies. One example that I can give you – and this is well known as part of China’s south-south climate support – [is the] domestic procurement policies dictate that [what are] essentially development aid projects can only rely on Chinese-made products, which is fine, but a lot of times not services. So it has to be hardware – it has to be hardware – [which is donated] a lot of the time, not know-how. So that’s a problem. You would think that’s a problem that China can easily solve. And that’s also our argument. When we draw attention to the non-monetary actions needed, this is one of them – to reform domestic policies, so that it better facilitates effective action. I can also say, as a result of the domestic procurement policy, you see mostly solar water heaters, roadside solar-powered lights and quite a few satellites – literally satellites – being donated to the global south. These are the result of the rather outdated domestic procurement policies. So that needs to be reformed as well.

CB: Over the course of your research at ASPI on climate finance, you’ve spoken to various Chinese stakeholders – government officials, non-government organisations and industry participants. Do you see an increasing internal alignment to try and unify this kind of domestic policy-making process, in procurement or in other climate financing issues, or is there still a lot of fragmentation?

LS: The answer is no, there’s still a lot of fragmentation. I think the tricky situation that we have now is, if you go back to the early 2010s, the country was on the rise and there was a “go out” spirit, very much accelerated by the BRI. And, as a result of that, you have the “hundred flowers blooming” [bǎi huā qí fàng 百花齐放, which here means various industries growing successfully], right? Different agencies are all handling some sort of overseas project, be they aid-, investment- or trade-related. So you end up with an unavoidable fragmentation. What has happened since a few years ago is that, all of a sudden, there is a declining political appetite – or ability – to go as much out as [there was] a decade ago. But you still have the various channels. So that’s where we are: a shrinking political will or economic ability, but still a very fragmented bureaucratic picture.

So how do we go from here? I think the country – and this is a bit of a side-note – I think the country is in a bit of a “soul-searching” mode. On one hand, dealing with lack of political will or economic capacity. On the other hand, there is still a deeply fragmented bureaucratic landscape. It’s a bit hard to see how the situation will improve in the very near term. Ideally, there needs to be a high-level signal to call for a coherent strategy, but I don’t think that signal will happen anytime soon. I also think – and this is also just a side-note – bureaucratic fragmentation is a long-standing consistent theme in Chinese political culture. It even goes beyond the specific issue that we’re talking about in this area of development aid. If you look at other areas, it’s a similar situation. Fragmentation is the rule, not the exception.

CB: What do you think could be some practical short-term changes to improve the BRI as a vehicle for climate finance?

LS: I think this is increasingly something many organisations are looking at: namely, the Chinese role in helping developing countries. I think primarily – let’s just use southeast Asian countries as an example, looking at how to help southeast Asian countries to scale up their renewable energy deployment. The complicating factor there is it is not a one-party exercise. It’s not as easy as saying China has the equipment, it has the political will to sell the equipment, and the equipment will somehow be installed in the Philippines or Indonesia. The recipient country also plays a very important role providing the policy framework, the political economic environment in which those projects will be developed. There are still many gaps in those environments. It takes two to tango.

The question is what role can China play to facilitate a better environment for its own engagement with those countries. And that role will increasingly require China to engage, not only on the commercial level – providing the hardware, investment or construction – but also engage with the policy framework of those recipient countries. That’s going to take some time, but I think that’s increasingly where China needs to go. The good news is, at a very high level, all these countries have committed to various decarbonisation courses, and we have committed too, also, at COP last year, to the tripling of renewable energy. So how do we operationalise those very high-level visions at the ground level in a country like Indonesia, and what’s China’s role in it?

CB: This question might lean towards over-generalisation, but wouldn’t a counter-argument be that China is an attractive investment partner precisely because it doesn’t [engage with the policy framework of] recipient countries? Is there an incentive from the investment recipient’s side to make China have these higher standards?

LS: Again, it’s a two-way tango. But I think the good news is, number one, on the Chinese side – at least when it comes to the energy sector – China has already committed to not support coal-fired power plants. So, in a way China is going there without principles, without any kind of pre-judgments, but, in a way, China has already made a very strong rule for itself with “no coal”. And this has been largely implemented – with a few exceptions here and there, but we’re certainly not talking about what happened in the 2010s: 10 coal-fired power plants here in Indonesia, [and] on another island in Indonesia five more. That’s not where we are.

So, in a way, that question has really been partly solved, by a self-imposed rule from China and we should give them credit for that. They’re trying to move to the “greener” side. But, indeed, how do we also accelerate the necessary policy framework on the part of developing countries? This is a critical area.

I would just say we’re still quite new in this exercise. China only announced not to support coal [three] years ago. We’ve only made big strides when it comes to the global energy transition and the big visions at COP28 half a year ago. It takes a long time for domestic policy reforms in countries, such as the Philippines and Indonesia. There are also physical infrastructure constraints in those countries. So it takes time for the two sides to work things out. But I think the general mission, or the general direction, is there. It’s not a “whether” question, but a “how” question: how can China accelerate its cooperation with Indonesia, and vice versa.

CB: How do you think that requests for China to contribute to climate finance, be they made by Western countries or by potential [recipient] countries, could be more successful? And, then, which countries do you think could be the most effective and the most amenable partners?

LS: When you talk about UNFCCC climate finance, it is an intrinsically more political debate. The core of the question is: how does China see itself in relation to the rest of the world, and in relation to other traditional donor developed countries, right? Does it see itself graduating to shoulder the same, or similar, responsibilities? Or does it see itself as still not there yet? And how will China think about the lack of delivery of the traditional donor countries [of the $100bn climate finance goal]. This is the core of the question.

I think, going forward, messages that are crafted in a more inviting way will probably work better with China. But that’s precisely the challenge. The political environment that we have will almost prevent that conversation from happening. That’s why the NCQG donor base question will be such a difficult one. I think, in an ideal world, a facilitating, inviting political environment, is what you want to create to facilitate higher aspiration on the Chinese part over time.

CB: Could you explain what you mean by “inviting”?

LS: I think there are two examples. One is simply how we talk about this issue, right?…If your framing is ‘China needs to pay’, or ‘we believe China is ready’ or ‘China is responsible’, then I think politically this will become very difficult for China. Because a lot of the framing – even just enlarging the donor base, that phrase – if you think about it, it assumes kind of a moral high ground. Somebody is saying we need to enlarge the donor base: who is that somebody? That is somebody who thinks they occupy a moral high ground. That framing also implies a legal argument – there’s a legal argument to actually formally enlarge the donor base, which I think China will not agree with.

Enlarging the donor base also carries this undertone that “we want more people to pay so that we can pay less”, if you think about it. It’s very – given the current geopolitical environment – it’s very easily perceived as just an extension of the political tension between China and the west, an extension to the climate finance field. So, given all these reasons, we just need to find a different way, a better way, to talk about this issue. We’re not trying to shy away from this issue, but [we need] a better way to talk about it.

The other example that I can give you is not narrative or framing, but concrete project-level action. [Our research has looked at] whether trilateral cooperation would be possible – if not solving all the problems, at least a few demonstration projects that will convey a political signal that we’re all in. This is not about shying away from our responsibility, but it’s all hands on deck: everybody trying to play to their strengths and play a role. What we mean by trilateral cooperation is one side, of course, is the recipient country – climate-vulnerable countries – and China and traditional donor countries. We do believe there could be areas where China and other traditional donor countries can complement each other. They need to work out the specific areas where they share synergy.

From our conversation with practitioners, I think they all realise that this is a very good idea, there is a political will to embrace that model. But when it comes to the practical details, I can give you one example: if you want to play into the strengths of China’s ability to deliver low-carbon products, and it strengths to be able to get those projects deployed very fast, and you want to tap into the financial resources that developed countries have – you could easily imagine that this will not work for developed countries, because they are essentially channelling their taxpayer money to buy China-made products. That’s a political no-go. [Despite] the desire [for cooperation] and everybody seeing the benefit of trilateral cooperation, I also wouldn’t want to underestimate the practical challenges – there are a lot of constraints, a lot of them imposed by the current geopolitical environment.

CB: Something that struck me, whilst I was looking more into US-China moves on climate finance, is that the South-South Climate Cooperation Fund was actually announced by Xi during a press conference at the White House in 2015. How would you say that conditions in the US-China dynamic have changed since then? And is there a possibility we could ever get back to that 2015 cooperation?

LS: I had the same lightbulb moment when I reviewed what happened in 2015. The two countries actually came together on finance and they actually announced [funds worth] the same amount of money to developing countries. What signal does that send? That signal says: “Hey, China believes it is shouldering the same responsibility as the US when it comes to supporting the global south”. That was what happened nearly 10 years ago. That’s striking if you think about it now. We’re in a very different time now.

I think the G2 (the US and China) angle is critical because, if you think about it, for the last couple of COPs, I think this one [COP29] is probably the best recipe for huge tension between the US and China. Given the agenda set for this COP: it is finance, right? I’m not saying for the last couple of COPs there were no controversial issues between the G2, but this one is particularly controversial. If one side or both sides want to weaponise this issue, they can find all the ways to weaponise it and blow up the COP.

This year we are also facing a unique challenge, which is we’re in a US election year, and we also have two [new] climate envoys on both sides. So [this is] different from the last couple of years, when at this point in the year you probably already knew that [former climate envoys] John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua are working on something, trying to resolve their differences before the COP. We don’t have clarity on that at this point in time.

In our view, the two sides will definitely need to find a minimum level of alignment on the NCQG question, on the donor-base question. That’s a necessary condition for the COP to be a smooth-sailing one. Will they be able to do that? I think that’s the real question. I can’t imagine a COP which features the US sitting on one side of the table and the Chinese sitting on the far other side. That will make for a very contentious COP. I hope that they get this message that it’s actually also in their interest to find alignment in advance. We’re also – to add one more thing – dealing with a rather inexperienced COP president. So if you want to make the job easier for them, you’d want some big power alignment ahead of time.

CB: We’ve talked about big changes regarding the negotiation teams, the changes due to the fact the US election is coming up. But we’ve also seen significant changes in China’s economic situation, especially compared to 10 years ago. You interviewed various people on this impact, in particular. What are the barriers in their view to China scaling up current climate financing and future pledges?

LS: I think the economic challenges are high on people’s mind and, politically, it imposes a very strong mental barrier – I think we felt this very strongly in our conversations – mental barriers with our Chinese interlocutors, for an idea that would push them to do more internationally. It’s just very difficult to achieve that now.

That’s the reality that we need to deal with. That is also why our sense is that there are indeed very real and challenging barriers for China to scale up its international climate finance in the near term. I don’t think we can be naive about it. But, that said, we also tried to find ways to ensure that [China] will actually be able to do more and achieve more in practice. That’s why [ASPI] also made the suggestion that we can drive an even stronger emphasis on sustainability in China’s existing international infrastructure initiatives – such as the BRI. I think that’s a pragmatic way to actually ensure more finances go into the low-carbon dimension.

And I also think – one more piece of advice here – is that people who are working at the international level when it comes to climate finance tend to be COP-oriented. People’s timeframes when thinking about their strategy is on a yearly basis. But I think we also need to realise that this is a multi-year exercise. There are certain political conditions that you will need to build over time to convince China or facilitate China to do more.

So what are the multi-year investments? What are the seeds that you can plant now to cultivate over time? That’s the background against which we make recommendations such as…more sharing of knowledge and experience from traditional donor countries to China, on how they have managed their climate aid – what’s the right institutional setup; how they developed their strategy; how were projects selected and developed; and their experience working with recipient countries…You guys are familiar with, for example, the ETS [China’s emissions trading system], right? It’s a huge undertaking to build up the technical capacity in China – there has been a decade of capacity-building support, from the European side primarily. I would say China’s development of international aid is an exercise on a similar scale, if not even larger.

CB: Recently, the two new climate envoys, Liu and Podesta, met in the US. Can you share any signals from their meeting about how US-China interactions might look – not just on climate finance, but across the board?

LS: I think I’ll just say three things. Number one: I think this visit proves that there is still willingness between the two countries to engage with each other, there is still a strong commitment to implement what they agreed last year in the Sunnylands agreement. Liu’s visit in DC, we should note, is the meeting of the bilateral working group that the Sunnylands agreement re-established. So this is a continuation and the implementation section. As you saw in the readout, there was also progress made during his visit in DC. So that’s message number one. I should also add that the two envoys are, I think, also committed to learn from what has served this relationship in the past, including by building a personal relationship with each other. They had a working lunch and then reportedly John Podesta also hosted Liu and part of his team at his house for dinner.

The second message is that, despite all of the shared commitment to implement and to continue their engagement, there are many differences and contentious points. Many of those disagreements are structural – disagreements for which it is very difficult to see any near-term solutions or breakthroughs. The US concerns over China’s energy sector and the continued investment in coal, for example. The gap between the US’s expectations on China’s NDC [nationally determined contributions] and what China is willing to commit to. And, on the Chinese side, their scepticism about the US’s ability to deliver what it has promised, both when it comes to climate emission reduction targets, and also climate finance. And, added on top of that, of course, is the trade issue. So there are still many disagreements.

I think this dynamic, this disagreement, also puts the bilateral climate relationship firmly into the pattern of the rest of the bilateral relationship. What I mean by this is: if you look at ongoing bilateral dialogues on finance, trade and many other issues, the pattern is very clear: the two sides are committed to engage with each other; keep communication channels open; they will meet, either in China, or in the US, or in third countries; and, when they meet, there is normally a set of standard talking points without too many substantive agreements, let alone progress.

I think this is a dangerous pattern, if not for other issues, at least for climate change – because this issue is a time-bound, global, environmental crisis that requires real solutions and real progress between the two countries. And we still haven’t seen the political courage to set this issue aside so that, in an overall competitive relationship, progress can be made on certain issues: issues that are in the shared interests of both countries, but also of the rest of the world. We haven’t seen the political courage to allow that to happen and allow progress in a small number of issues. So that, I think, is very concerning. But, to be honest with you, I think this will be the pattern for the rest of the year, in the run-up to the [US] election.

That brings me to my third point, which is looking ahead. If some of the structural disagreements cannot be addressed between the two countries, there are at least a few issues on the multilateral agenda – in particular, climate finance – that would require the two countries to work together to bridge their differences and to find minimum levels of alignment ahead of the COP. The question is will they be able to do that? I am not entirely sure what signals this trip has sent – this is something that I think will require all of our attention. I think, fundamentally, on climate finance, it works in both countries’ interest if they can find alignment before the COP.

CB: Great, thank you.

LS: No worries, anytime.

The post Interview: China’s position on ‘international climate finance’ ahead of COP29 appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Interview: China’s position on ‘international climate finance’ ahead of COP29

Greenhouse Gases

Analysis: Fossil-fuel CO2 emissions to set new record in 2025, as land sink ‘recovers’

Published

7 hours ago

November 12, 2025

Alice Rush

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement will rise around 1.1% in 2025, reaching a record 38.1bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to the latest figures from the Global Carbon Project.

However, falling land-use emissions means that global CO2 emissions in 2025 will remain relatively unchanged compared to 2024 levels.

The 20th edition of the annual Global Carbon Budget report, published today, also finds that the land carbon sink – the portion of human-caused CO2 emissions absorbed by plants and soils – appears to have recovered to its pre-El Niño strength after two unusually weak years.

However, research published alongside the report by the same team also suggests that climate change has caused a long-term decline in land and ocean carbon sinks, with sinks being about 15% weaker over the past decade than they would have been without climate impacts.

The study, published in Nature, finds that the decline of carbon sinks has contributed about 8% to the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration since 1960.

The 2025 Global Carbon Budget report also estimates that:

Emissions in China and India are projected to grow much less in 2025 compared to the past decade, while emissions in the US and EU are projected to grow this year after years of decline.
Global CO2 emissions from land-use change are expected to decrease by nearly 10% in 2025, driven by reductions in deforestation and forest degradation in South America.
Total CO2 emissions – fossil and land use – have grown more slowly over the past decade (0.3% per year on average) compared to the previous decade (1.9% per year).
The remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5C is virtually exhausted and is equivalent to only four years of current emissions. Carbon budgets to limit warming to 1.7C and 2C would similarly be used up in 12 and 25 years, respectively.
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 425.7 parts per million (ppm) in 2025, 2.3ppm above 2023 and 52% above pre-industrial levels.

(For detailed coverage of previous editions of the report, see Carbon Brief’s coverage for 2024, 2023 and 2022.)

Global emissions remain flat

The Global Carbon Budget (GCB) finds that total global CO2 emissions in 2025 – including those from fossil fuels and land use – are projected to remain approximately flat at 42.2GtCO2, falling by a negligible -0.04% compared to last year.

This means 2025 is effectively tied with 2024 as the highest global CO2 emissions on record.

Flat total CO2 emissions in 2025 reflect a combination of continued rising emissions from fossil fuel and industry and declining emissions from land-use change. Fossil CO2 emissions rose 1.1% to 38.1GtCO2, while land-use emissions declined by -9.8% to 4.1GtCO2 (albeit with large uncertainties).

The figure below shows the 2025 global CO2 emissions update (red solid line) alongside 2024 (dark blue dotted), 2023 (mid blue dotted) 2022 (light blue dotted), 2021 (light grey dotted) and 2020 (dark grey dotted). The shaded area indicates the uncertainty around the new 2025 budget.

(Each year, the GCB is updated to include the latest data as well as improvements to modelling sources and sinks, resulting in some year-to-year revisions to the historical record.)

Annual total global CO2 emissions – from fossil and land-use change – between 1959-2024 for the 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 versions of the Global Carbon Project’s Global Carbon Budget, in GtCO2. Shaded area shows the estimated one-standard-deviation uncertainty for the 2025 budget. Data from the Global Carbon Project. Chart by Carbon Brief.

The 2025 figures are notably higher than those in the prior five GCB reports, reflecting an upward revision in historical land-use emissions. (This is discussed in more detail in the land-use emissions section below.)

Total global CO2 emissions have notably flattened in the past decade (2014-25), growing at only 0.3% per year compared to the 1.9% rate of growth during the prior decade (2004-13) and the longer-term average growth rate of 1.6% over 1959-2014.

This apparent flattening is due to declining land-use emissions compensating for continued – but slow – increases in fossil CO2 emissions. Fossil emissions grew around 0.2GtCO2 per year over the past decade, while land-use emissions decreased by a comparable amount.

However, despite the emissions plateau, there is still no sign of the rapid and deep decrease in CO2 emissions needed to reach net-zero and stabilise global temperatures in-line with the Paris Agreement temperature goal.

If global emissions remain at current levels, the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C (with a 50% chance) will be rapidly exhausted.

(The carbon budget is the total amount of CO2 that scientists estimate can be emitted if warming is to be kept below a particular temperature threshold. Earlier this year, the Indicators of Global Climate Change report estimated the remaining carbon budget had declined by three-quarters between the start of 2020 and the start of 2025.)

With human-caused global warming sitting at around 1.36C above pre-industrial levels in 2024, the remaining budget for 1.5C is 170GtCO2, equivalent to four years of current emissions.

The GCB report finds that the remaining carbon budgets to limit warming to 1.7C and 2C have been reduced to 525GtCO2 (12 years at current emissions levels) and 1,055GtCO2 (25 years), respectively.

Global fossil CO2 emissions also grew more slowly in the past decade (0.8% per year) compared to the previous decade (2.1%). This was driven by the continued decarbonisation of energy systems – including a shift from burning coal to gas and replacing fossil fuels with renewables – as well as slightly weaker global economic growth during the past decade.

The figure below breaks down global emissions (dark blue line) in the 2025 budget into fossil (mid blue) and land-use (light blue) components. Fossil CO2 emissions represent the bulk of total global emissions in recent years, accounting for approximately 90% of emissions in 2025 (compared to 10% for land use). This represents a large change from the first half of the 20th century, when land-use emissions were approximately the same as fossil emissions.

Global fossil emissions include CO2 emitted from burning coal, oil and gas, as well as the production of cement. However, to determine total fossil emissions, the Global Carbon Budget also subtracts the cement carbonation sink – CO2 slowly absorbed by cement once it is exposed to the air – from fossil emissions.

Global CO2 emissions separated out into fossil and land-use change components between 1959 and 2025. Data from the Global Carbon Project. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Global emissions can also be expressed on a per-capita basis, as shown in the figure below.

While it is ultimately total global emissions that matter for the Earth’s climate – and a global per-capita figure glosses over a lot of variation among, and within, countries – it is noteworthy that global per-capita fossil emissions peaked in 2012 and have been slightly declining in the years since.

Global per-capita CO2 emissions over 1959-2025. Data from the Global Carbon Project. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Land-use emissions continue downward trend

Global land-use emissions stem from deforestation, forest degradation, loss of peatlands and harvesting trees for wood. They averaged around 5.0GtCO2 over the past decade (2015-24) and the Global Carbon Budget provides an initial projection for 2025 of 4.1GtCO2.

This represents a 0.5GtCO2 decrease in land-use emissions relative to 2024. The GCB report suggests that this was largely driven by a combination of reductions in deforestation and forest degradation in South America and by the end of the dry 2023-24 El Niño conditions.

Overall, land-use emissions have decreased by around 32% compared to their average in the 2000s, with a particularly large drop in the past decade. This decline is statistically significant and is due both to decreasing deforestation and increasing levels of reforestation and afforestation globally.

Three countries – Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – collectively contribute approximately 57% of the global land-use emissions. In the past, China has been a meaningful contributor to land-use emissions, but in recent years its land-use emissions have turned net-negative as more trees have been planted than cut down.

The figure below shows changes in emissions over time in these countries, as well as land-use emissions in the rest of the world (grey).

Annual CO2 emissions from land-use change by major emitting countries and the rest of world over 1959-2024. Country-level land-use change emissions are not yet available for 2025. Data from the Global Carbon Project. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Historical land-use emissions have been revised upward in the 2025 GCB report compared to prior estimates. This reflects a combination of two factors:

The discontinuation of one of the four bookkeeping models that GCB has historically relied on for land-use emissions estimates. This model tended to show lower land-use emissions than the others.
The inclusion of the impacts from CO2 fertilisation on global biomass densities. Because forests have higher biomass densities now than in the past, due to increasing CO2, this tends to increase the estimate of land-use emissions for recent years.

Fossil-fuel CO2 hits record highs

Global emissions of fossil CO2 – including coal, oil, gas and cement – increased by around 1.1% in 2025, relative to 2024, with an uncertainty range of 0.2-2.2%. This represents a new record high and surpasses the prior record set in 2024.

The figure below shows global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, divided into emissions from major emitting countries including China (dark blue shading), the US (mid blue), the EU (light blue), India (light blue) and the remainder of the world (grey).

Annual fossil CO2 emissions by major countries and the rest of the world over 1959-2025. This data excludes the cement carbonation sink as national-level values are not available, meaning that the sum of values reported here are slightly higher than the global average numbers. Data from the Global Carbon Project. Chart by Carbon Brief.

China represents 32% of global CO2 emissions today. Its 2025 emissions are projected to increase by a relatively small 0.4% (with an uncertainty range of -0.9% to 2%), driven by a small rise in emissions from coal (0.3%), a modest rise in gas (1.3%) and a larger rise in oil (2.1%).

Given the uncertainty range, a decrease in Chinese emissions is also a possibility, but this will not be confirmed until the full 2025 data is available.

Similarly, recent analysis for Carbon Brief found that China’s emissions were “finely balanced between a small fall or rise” in 2025. However, it said that a drop in the full-year total became more likely after a 3% decline in September. (The Global Carbon Project estimates are based on data covering January through to August, which point towards a small rise in 2025.)

Whether China’s emissions see small rise or fall in 2025, the outcome will be due to moderate growth in energy consumption combined with an extraordinary growth in renewable power generation. This would represent the second year in a row where Chinese emissions growth was well below the average rate over the past decade.

The US represents 13% of global emissions and emissions in 2025 are projected to increase by 1.9% (-0.2 to +4.1%) compared with 2024. This marks a reversal from recent trends in declining CO2 emissions.

The projected growth of emissions in the US is likely driven by a combination of three factors: a colder start to the year after a mild 2024, which led to greater heating requirements, higher gas prices, which led to more coal being used in power generation, as well as an increase in total demand for electricity.

US emissions from coal are expected to increase by a substantial 7.5% in 2025, emissions from both oil and gas by a more modest 1.1% and emissions from cement to fall by -8.0%.

While policies enacted by the current US administration may increase CO2 emissions going forward, their impact on national emissions levels in 2025 were likely relatively modest compared to other factors.

India represents 8% of global emissions. In 2025, its emissions are projected to increase by 1.4% (-0.3% to +3.1%) on 2024 levels, significantly below recent trends.

An early monsoon with the highest-ever May rainfall substantially reduced cooling requirements in May and June, the hottest months of the year. Strong growth or renewables – particularly solar – has also helped limit the growth of Indian emissions.

Indian emissions from coal are expected to grow 1.7%, with oil growing 0.1%, gas shrinking by -6.4% and cement growing by 9.9%.

The EU represents 6% of global emissions. Its emissions are projected to increase by 0.4% in 2025, with an uncertainty range of -2.1 to +2.8%. This represents a divergence from a past decline in emissions (albeit with large uncertainties).

EU emissions from coal are expected to decline by -0.3%, whereas emissions from oil and gas are projected to increase by 0.6% and 0.9%, respectively. Cement emissions are expected to fall by -4.1%.

The increase in EU emissions is in part from weather-related low hydropower and wind generation which – despite increases in solar – have led to an increase in electricity generation from gas. In addition, a relatively cold February led to increased use of natural gas for space heating.

International aviation and shipping (included in the “rest of world” in the chart above) are responsible for 3% of global emissions. They are projected to increase by 6.8% for aviation, but remain flat for international shipping. This year will be the first time that aviation emissions have exceeded pre-Covid levels.

The rest of the world (excluding aviation) represents 38% of global emissions. Emissions are expected to grow by 1.1% in 2025 (ranging from -1.1% to +3.3%), with increases in emissions from coal (1%), oil (0.5%), gas (1.8%) and cement (2.4%).

The total emissions for each year over 2022-25, as well as the countries and regions that were responsible for the changes in absolute emissions, are shown in the figure below.

Annual emissions for 2022, 2023, 2024 and estimates for 2025 are shown by the black bars. The smaller bars show the change in emissions between each set of years, broken down by country or region – the US (dark blue), EU (mid blue), China (light blue), India (pale blue) and the rest of the world (grey). Negative values show reductions in emissions, while positive values reflect emission increases.

Annual global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels (navy blue bars) and drivers of changes between years by country (smaller bars), excluding the cement carbonation sink as national-level values are not available. Negative values indicate reductions in emissions. Note that the y-axis does not start at zero. Data from the Global Carbon Project. Chart by Carbon Brief.

The US represented a large part of the rise in global fossil-fuel emissions in 2025. US emissions increases over 2024-25 contributed about 40% of the total global increase – more than the EU, China and India contributions combined.

The Global Carbon Project notes that emissions have declined over the past decade (2015-24) in 35 nations, which collectively account for 27% of global emissions. This is up from 18 countries during the prior decade (2005-14).

The decrease in emissions in those countries comes despite continued domestic economic growth and represents a long-term “decoupling” of CO2 emissions and the economy.

The carbon intensity of energy has consistently decreased over the past decade in China, the US, the EU – and, to a lesser extent, globally.

However, peaking CO2 emissions requires that the rate of decarbonisation exceeds the growth in energy demand. This has happened in some regions, including the US and EU, but not yet globally.

Modest growth in emissions from coal, oil, gas and cement

Global fossil-fuel emissions primarily result from the combustion of coal, oil and gas.

In 2025, coal is responsible for more emissions than any other fossil fuel, representing approximately 42% of global fossil-fuel CO2 emissions. Oil is the second largest contributor at 33% of fossil CO2, while gas comes in at 21%.

The production of cement is responsible for around 3.8% of global emissions, but this is reduced to 1.9% once the carbonation sink – the drawdown of atmospheric CO2 by concrete – is taken into account.

These percentages reflect both the amount of each fossil fuel consumed globally, but also differences in CO2 intensities. Coal results in the most CO2 emitted per unit of heat or energy produced, followed by oil and gas.

The figure below shows global CO2 emissions from different fuels over time, covering coal (dark blue), oil (mid blue) and gas (light blue), as well as cement production (pale blue) and other sources (grey).

While coal emissions increased rapidly in the mid-2000s, they have largely flattened since 2013. However, coal use increased significantly in 2021 and then more modestly in the subsequent four years.

Annual CO2 emissions by fossil fuel over 1959-2025. Data from the Global Carbon Project. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Global emissions from coal increased by 0.8% in 2025 compared to 2024, while oil emissions increased 1.0% and gas emissions increased by 1.3%.

Despite setting a new record this year, global coal use is only 6% above 2013 levels – a full 13 years ago. By contrast, during the 2000s, global coal use grew at a rate of around 4% every single year.

The figure below shows the total emissions for each year over 2022-25 (black bars), as well as the absolute change in emissions for each fuel between years.

Annual global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels (black bars) and drivers of changes between years by fuel. Negative values indicate reductions in emissions. Note that the y-axis does not start at zero. Data from the Global Carbon Project. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Global oil emissions were suppressed for a few years after the 2020, but rebounded to pre-pandemic levels as of 2024 and have continued to grow in 2025.

This reflects that, despite falling sales of internal combustion engine vehicles, not enough electric vehicles (EVs) have yet been sold to result in peak oil demand.

The global carbon budget

Every year, the Global Carbon Project provides an estimate of the overall “global carbon budget”. This is based on estimates of the release of CO2 through human activity and its uptake by the oceans and land, with the remainder adding to atmospheric concentrations of the gas.

(This differs from the commonly used term “remaining carbon budget”, which refers to the amount of CO2 that can be released while keeping warming below global limits of 1.5 or 2C.)

The most recent budget, including estimated values for 2025, is shown in the figure below.

Values above zero represent sources of CO2 – from fossil fuels and industry (dark blue shading) and land use (mid blue) – while values below zero represent carbon sinks that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Any CO2 emissions that are not absorbed by the oceans (light grey) or land vegetation (mid grey) accumulate in the atmosphere (dark grey). In addition, a dashed black line is shown to represent the expected sum of sinks based on estimated emissions.

Annual global carbon budget of sources and sinks over 1959-2025. Fossil CO2 emissions include the cement carbonation sink. Note that the budget does not fully balance every year due to remaining uncertainties, particularly in sinks; the imbalance can be seen by the difference between the sum of the sinks and the sum of the sources (dashed black line). Data from the Global Carbon Project. Chart by Carbon Brief.

Over the past decade (2015-24), the world’s oceans have taken up approximately 29% of total human-caused emissions, or around 11.8GtCO2 per year.

The ocean CO2 sink has been relatively flat since 2014 after growing rapidly over the prior decades, reflecting the flattening of global emissions during that period.

This estimate for carbon sinks has been revised up from 26% in prior versions of the GCB, reflecting a major update to carbon budgets driven by new data and modelling of carbon sink behavior.

The land sink takes up around 21% of global emissions, or 8.7GtCO2 per year on average over the past decade – discussed in more detail in the section below. This is down from 29% in prior budgets.

The atmosphere continues to accumulate the bulk of human-caused CO2 emissions, with about 49% going into the atmosphere on average over the past decade – a rate of 20.4GtCO2 per year.

The growth rate of atmospheric CO2 in 2025 is expected to be around 2.3ppm, which is a bit below the decadal average rate of 2.6ppm over the past decade (2015-24). This is well below the record-setting rise of 3.7ppm in 2024, which was primarily driven by the effect of the 2023-24 El Niño conditions weakening the land sink.

Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are set to reach an annual average of 425.7ppm in 2025, representing an increase of 52% above pre-industrial levels of 280ppm.

There remains an unusual imbalance in the carbon budget in 2024, where the sum of the sinks is notably larger than estimated emissions. This can be seen in the figure above, where the dashed line is below the shaded area.

Budget imbalances are not unprecedented – there are large uncertainties in both emissions data and sink estimates. But the rise in the amount of CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere in 2024 is larger than would be expected based on emissions.

There are a number of potential explanations for this 2024 imbalance. The land cover data for 2024 is not yet complete and it is possible that some fire emissions data might be missing from the record. This might result in either higher land-use emissions or lower land sinks than currently estimated.

Alternatively, it could be due to the CO2 growth rate – captured by surface stations managed by the US National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) – being slightly high. CO2 records for 2024 from these stations are higher than those obtained from satellite-based sensors, though it remains unclear which provides the most accurate measurement.

A declining, but not collapsing, land sink

After an usually weak land carbon sink in 2023, there were a number of media articles about its potential collapse.

For example, in October 2024, the Guardian wrote that “the sudden collapse of carbon sinks was not factored into climate models – and could rapidly accelerate global heating”.

The truth is a bit more complicated. While the impending collapse of the land carbon sink has been greatly exaggerated, there is growing evidence of a long-term weakening of both the land and ocean carbon sinks due to human activity.

And while the land sink has recovered to its pre-El Niño strength in 2025, aided by relatively low global fire CO2 emissions, it will continue to gradually weaken as global temperatures rise. This is not unexpected – scientists have long foreseen a weaker carbon sink in a warmer world.

A weaker land sink will contribute to higher global temperatures in the future as more CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels and land use change will accumulate in the atmosphere.

The figure below shows the percentage of human emissions absorbed by the land sink in every year since 1959, with a recovery upwards in 2025 after two relatively low years.

Percentage of global CO2 emissions (land use and fossil) taken up by the land sink each year. Data from the Global Carbon Project. Chart by Carbon Brief.

In a study published in Nature alongside the release of the 2025 Global Carbon Budget, the same team of researchers provide a detailed estimate of exactly how the land and ocean sinks have changed as a result of human activity.

The research finds that the land and ocean sinks are 25% smaller and 7% smaller, respectively, than they would have been without the effects of climate change over 2015-24.

This amounts to a nearly 20% reduction in the efficacy of current global carbon sinks – that is, both the land and ocean – and a 15% reduction compared to how large they would be without the effects of climate change.

The figure below, from the new paper, shows the impact of climate change on the ocean sink (blue), the land sink (green) and atmospheric CO2 concentrations (grey) since 1960.

Impact of climate change on the land sink (panel a), the ocean sink (panel b) and their cumulative effect on atmospheric CO2 concentrations (panel c). Source: Friedlingstein et al. (2025).

The weakening of carbon sinks due to human activity has led to an increase of atmospheric CO2 of more than 8ppm since 1960. The combined effects of climate change and deforestation have turned tropical forests in south-east Asia and in large parts of South America from CO2 sinks to sources.

And these sinks will likely continue to weaken as long as atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to rise and the world continues to warm. There are a wide range of estimates of carbon cycle feedbacks among climate models, but a large carbon cycle feedback could result in a few tenths of a degree of future warming.

The post Analysis: Fossil-fuel CO2 emissions to set new record in 2025, as land sink ‘recovers’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Analysis: Fossil-fuel CO2 emissions to set new record in 2025, as land sink ‘recovers’

Greenhouse Gases

IEA: Fossil-fuel use will peak before 2030 – unless ‘stated policies’ are abandoned

Published

22 hours ago

November 12, 2025

Alice Rush

The world’s fossil-fuel use is still on track to peak before 2030, despite a surge in political support for coal, oil and gas, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The IEA’s latest World Energy Outlook 2025, published during the opening days of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, shows coal at or close to a peak, with oil set to follow around 2030 and gas by 2035, based on the stated policy intentions of the world’s governments.

Under the same assumptions, the IEA says that clean-energy use will surge, as nuclear power rises 39% by 2035, solar by 344% and wind by 178%.

Still, the outlook has some notable shifts since last year, with coal use revised up by around 6% in the near term, oil seeing a shallower post-peak decline and gas plateauing at higher levels.

This means that the IEA expects global warming to reach 2.5C this century if “stated policies” are implemented as planned, up marginally from 2.4C in last year’s outlook.

In addition, after pressure from the Trump administration in the US, the IEA has resurrected its “current policies scenario”, which – effectively – assumes that governments around the world abandon their stated intentions and only policies already set in legislation are continued.

If this were to happen, the IEA warns, global warming would reach 2.9C by 2100, as oil and gas demand would continue to rise and the decline in coal use would proceed at a slower rate.

This year’s outlook also includes a pathway that limits warming to 1.5C in 2100, but says that this would only be possible after a period of “overshoot”, where temperature rise peaks at 1.65C.

The IEA will publish its “announced pledges scenario” at a later date, to illustrate the impact of new national climate pledges being implemented on time and in full.

(See Carbon Brief’s coverage of previous IEA world energy outlooks from 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015.)

World energy outlook

The IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook (WEO) is published every autumn. It is regarded as one of the most influential annual contributions to the understanding of energy and emissions trends.

The outlook explores a range of scenarios, representing different possible futures for the global energy system. These are developed using the IEA’s “global energy and climate model”.

The latest report stresses that “none of [these scenarios] should be regarded as a forecast”.

However, this year’s outlook marks a major shift in emphasis between the scenarios – and it reintroduces a pathway where oil and gas demand continues to rise for many decades.

This pathway is named the “current policies scenario” (CPS), which assumes that governments abandon their planned policies, leaving only those that are already set in legislation.

If the world followed this path, then global temperatures would reach 2.9C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 and would be “set to keep rising from there”, the IEA says.

The CPS was part of the annual outlook until 2020, when the IEA said that it was “difficult to imagine” such a pathway “prevailing in today’s circumstances”.

It has been resurrected following heavy pressure from the US, which is a major funder of the IEA that accounts for 14% of the agency’s budget.

For example, in July Politico reported “a ratcheted-up US pressure campaign” and “months of public frustrations with the IEA from top Trump administration officials”. It noted:

“Some Republicans say the IEA has discouraged investment in fossil fuels by publishing analyses that show near-term peaks in global demand for oil and gas.”

The CPS is the first scenario to be discussed in detail in the report, appearing in chapter three. The CPS similarly appears first in Annex A, the data tables for the report.

The second scenario is the “stated policies scenario” (STEPS), featured in chapter four of this year’s outlook. Here, the outlook also includes policies that governments say they intend to bring forward and that the IEA judges as likely to be implemented in practice.

In this world, global warming would reach 2.5C by 2100 – up marginally from the 2.4C expected in the 2024 edition of the outlook.

Beyond the STEPS and the CPS, the outlook includes two further scenarios.

One is the “net-zero emissions by 2050” (NZE) scenario, which illustrates how the world’s energy system would need to change in order to limit warming in 2100 to 1.5C.

The NZE was first floated in the 2020 edition of the report and was then formally featured in 2021.

The report notes that, unlike in previous editions, this scenario would see warming peak at more than 1.6C above pre-industrial temperatures, before returning to 1.5C by the end of the century.

This means it would include a high level of temporary “overshoot” of the 1.5C target. The IEA explains that this results from the “reality of persistently high emissions in recent years”. It adds:

“In addition to very rapid progress with the transformation of the energy sector, bringing the temperature rise back down below 1.5C by 2100 also requires widespread deployment of CO2 removal technologies that are currently unproven at large scale.”

Finally, the outlook includes a new scenario where everyone in the world is able to gain access to electricity by 2035 and to clean cooking by 2040, named “ACCESS”.

While the STEPS appears second in the running order of the report, it is mentioned slightly more frequently than the CPS, as shown in the figure below. The CPS is a close second, however, whereas the IEA’s 1.5C pathway (NZE) receives a declining level of attention.

Number of mentions of each scenario per 100 pages of text. Source: Carbon Brief analysis.

US critics of the IEA have presented its stated policies scenario as “disconnected from reality”, in contrast to what they describe as the “likely scenario” of “business as usual”.

Yet the current policies scenario is far from a “business-as-usual” pathway. The IEA says this explicitly in an article published ahead of the outlook:

“The CPS might seem like a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, but this terminology can be misleading in an energy system where new technologies are already being deployed at scale, underpinned by robust economics and mature, existing policy frameworks. In these areas, ‘business as usual’ would imply continuing the current process of change and, in some cases, accelerating it.”

In order to create the current policies scenario, where oil and gas use continues to surge into the future, the IEA therefore has to make more pessimistic assumptions about barriers to the uptake of new technologies and about the willingness of governments to row back on their plans. It says:

“The CPS…builds on a narrow reading of today’s policy settings…assuming no change, even where governments have indicated their intention to do so.”

This is not a scenario of “business as usual”. Instead, it is a scenario where countries around the world follow US president Donald Trump in dismantling their plans to shift away from fossil fuels.

More specifically, the current policies scenario assumes that countries around the world renege on their policy commitments and fail to honour their climate pledges.

For example, it assumes that Japan and South Korea fail to implement their latest national electricity plans, that China fails to continue its power-market reforms and abandons its provincial targets for clean power, that EU countries fail to meet their coal phase-out pledges and that US states such as California fail to extend their clean-energy targets.

Similarly, it assumes that Brazil, Turkey and India fail to implement their greenhouse gas emissions trading schemes (ETS) as planned and that China fails to expand its ETS to other industries.

The scenario also assumes that the EU, China, India, Australia, Japan and many others fail to extend or continue strengthening regulations on the energy efficiency of buildings and appliances, as well as those relating to the fuel-economy standards for new vehicles.

In contrast to the portrayal of the stated policies scenario as blindly assuming that all pledges will be met, the IEA notes that it does not give a free pass to aspirational targets. It says:

“[T]argets are not automatically assumed to be met; the prospects and timing for their realisation are subject to an assessment of relevant market, infrastructure and financial constraints…[L]ike the CPS, the STEPS does not assume that aspirational goals, such as those included in the Paris Agreement, are achieved.”

Only in the “announced pledges scenario” (APS) does the IEA assume that countries meet all of their climate pledges on time and full – regardless of how credible they are.

The APS does not appear in this year’s report, presumably because many countries missed the deadlines to publish new climate pledges ahead of COP30.

The IEA says it will publish its APS, assessing the impact of the new pledges, “once there is a more complete picture of these commitments”.

Fossil-fuel peak

In recent years, there has been a significant shift in the IEA’s outlook for fossil fuels under the stated policies scenario, which it has described as “a mirror to the plans of today’s policymakers”.

In 2020, the agency said that prevailing policy conditions pointed towards a “structural” decline in global coal demand, but that it was too soon to declare a peak in oil or gas demand.

By 2021, it said global fossil-fuel use could peak as soon as 2025, but only if all countries got on track to meet their climate goals. Under stated policies, it expected fossil-fuel use to hit a plateau from the late 2020s onwards, declining only marginally by 2050.

There was a dramatic change in 2022, when it said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting global energy crisis had “turbo-charged” the shift away from fossil fuels.

As a result, it said at the time that it expected a peak in demand for each of the fossil fuels. Coal “within a few years”, oil “in the mid-2030s” and gas ”by the end of the decade”.

This outlook sharpened further in 2023 and, by 2024, it was saying that each of the fossil fuels would see a peak in global demand before 2030.

This year’s report notes that “some formal country-level [climate] commitments have waned”, pointing to the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement.

The report says the “new direction” in the US is among “major new policies” in 48 countries. The other changes it lists include Brazil’s “energy transition acceleration programme”, Japan’s new plan for 2040 and the EU’s recently adopted 2040 climate target.

Overall, the IEA data still points to peaks in demand for coal, oil and gas under the stated policies scenario, as shown in the figure below.

Alongside this there is a surge in clean technologies, with renewables overtaking oil to become the world’s largest source of energy – not just electricity – by the early 2040s.

In this year’s outlook under stated policies, the IEA sees global coal demand as already being at – or very close to – a definitive peak, as the chart above shows.

Coal then enters a structural decline, where demand for the fuel is displaced by cheaper alternatives, particularly renewable sources of electricity.

The IEA reiterates that the cost of solar, wind and batteries has respectively fallen by 90%, 70% and 90% since 2010, with further declines of 10-40% expected by 2035.

(The report notes that household energy spending would be lower under the more ambitious NZE scenario than under stated policies, despite the need for greater investment.)

However, this year’s outlook has coal use in 2030 coming in some 6% higher than expected last year, although it ultimately declines to similar levels by 2050.

For oil, the agency’s data still points to a peak in demand this decade, as electric vehicles (EVs) and more efficient combustion engines erode the need for the fuel in road transport.

While this sees oil demand in 2030 reaching similar levels to what the IEA expected last year, the post-peak decline is slightly less marked in the latest outlook, ending some 5% higher in 2050.

The biggest shift compared with last year is for gas, where the IEA suggests that global demand will keep rising until 2035, rather than peaking by 2030.

Still, the outlook has gas demand in 2030 being only 7% higher than expected last year. It notes:

“Long-term natural gas demand growth is kept lower than in recent decades by the expanding deployment of renewables, efficiency gains and electrification of end-uses.”

In terms of clean energy, the outlook sees nuclear power output growing to 39% above 2024 levels by 2035 and doubling by 2050. Solar grows nearly four-fold by 2035 and nearly nine-fold by 2050, while wind power nearly triples and quadruples over the same periods.

Notably, the IEA sees strong growth of clean-energy technologies, even in the current policies scenario. Here, renewables would still become the world’s largest energy source before 2050.

This is despite the severe headwinds assumed in this scenario, including EVs never increasing from their current low share of sales in India or the US.

The CPS would see oil and gas use continuing to rise, with demand for oil reaching 11% above current levels by 2050 and gas climbing 31%, even as renewables nearly triple.

This means that coal use would still decline, falling to a fifth below current levels by 2050.

Finally, while the IEA considers the prospect of global coal demand continuing to rise rather than falling as expected, it gives this idea short shrift. It explains:

“A growth story for coal over the coming decades cannot entirely be ruled out but it would fly in the face of two crucial structural trends witnessed in recent years: the rise of renewable sources of power generation, and the shift in China away from an especially coal-intensive model of growth and infrastructure development. As such, sustained growth for coal demand appears highly unlikely.”

The post IEA: Fossil-fuel use will peak before 2030 – unless ‘stated policies’ are abandoned appeared first on Carbon Brief.

IEA: Fossil-fuel use will peak before 2030 – unless ‘stated policies’ are abandoned

Greenhouse Gases

Analysis: Which countries have sent the most delegates to COP30?

Published

2 days ago

November 11, 2025

Alice Rush

For the first time in the history of COP climate summits, the US – the world’s largest historical emitter – has not sent a delegation to the talks.

Back in January, newly inaugurated US president Donald Trump signed a letter to the UN to trigger the start of a US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement for a second time.

Although this process is not yet complete, the White House confirmed earlier this month that no “high-level officials” would be attending COP30 in Belém, Brazil.

The US joins Afghanistan, Myanmar and San Marino as the only countries not registering a delegation for the summit, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis of the provisional lists of delegates published by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Despite these absences, more than 56,000 delegates have signed up to COP30, provisionally placing the summit as one of the largest in COP history.

This is despite the run-up to the negotiations being dogged by reports of a shortage of beds and “sky-high” accommodation costs.

Brazil even offered free cabins on cruise ships moored in Belém to delegations from low-income nations who were otherwise unable to attend.

According to the provisional figures, 193 countries, plus the European Union, have registered a delegation for the summit.

Unsurprisingly, the largest delegation comes from COP30 hosts Brazil, with 3,805 people registered.

This is followed, in order, by China, Nigeria, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

This year also sees the largest number of “virtual” delegates, with more than 5,000 people signed up to attend the talks online.

Party delegations

With 56,118 delegates registered, COP30 is provisionally the second-largest COP in history, behind only COP28 in Dubai, which was attended by more than 80,000 people.

This is the provisional total, based on the delegates that have registered to be at the summit in person. At recent COPs, the final total is at least 10,000 lower, which would drop COP30 down to the fourth largest.

(The UNFCCC releases the final figures – based on participants collecting a physical badge at the venue – after the summit has closed.)

The chart below shows how the provisional figures for COP30 compare to the final totals in past COPs – going back to COP1 in Berlin in 1995.

Overall totals for delegates from parties, observers and the media for all COPs, as published by the UNFCCC (see this article for more details on the data). Data for COPs 1-29 are the “final” figures, while COP30 data is “provisional”. Chart by Carbon Brief.

The participant lists provided by the UNFCCC are divided between the different types of groups and organisations attending the summit. The largest group at COP30 is for delegates representing parties. These are nation states, plus the European Union, that have ratified the convention and play a full part in negotiations.

This group adds up to 11,519 delegates – the fourth largest behind the past three COPs.

(In keeping with recent COPs, the UNFCCC has published spreadsheets that name every single person that has registered for the summit – excluding support staff. Previously, COPs have typically included thousands of “overflow” participants in which countries and UN agencies could nominate delegates without their names appearing on their official lists.)

For consistency with Carbon Brief’s analysis of previous COPs, the above chart includes overflow delegates as a single group. However, the participant lists do divide the overflow delegates between parties and observer groups. Including the overflow numbers approximately doubles the total for party representatives to 23,509.

US no-show

Overall, of the 198 parties to the UNFCCC, 194 have registered delegations for COP30.

The most notable absentee is the US, which has been present at every other COP in history – even throughout Donald Trump’s first presidency.

On average, the US sends a delegation of around 100 people, typically making it one of the larger groups at the talks.

The absent parties – Afghanistan, Myanmar and San Marino – have been more sporadic attendees at past COPs.

Despite reports of a “logistical nightmare” hosting a COP summit in the Amazon, there has been no drop-off in the number of countries registering delegations for COP30.

In addition to hotel rooms and rental properties in Belém, beds have been made available on cruise ships, in converted shipping containers and in motels that Reuters primly described as being typically “aimed at amorous couples”.

Reports suggested that many developing nations considered scaling back their presence at COP30, with smaller delegations or attendees only coming for a few days.

While the average party delegation size of 59 (excluding overflows) is lower than the previous two COPs, it is similar to the average in COP26 in Glasgow and COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh.

The map and table below present the delegation size – split between party and overflow badges – for all the countries registered for COP30. The darker the shading, the more delegates that country has signed up. Use the search box to find the data for a specific party.

The largest delegation comes from host country Brazil, with 3,805 people registered. China (789) and Nigeria (749) follow with the second- and third-largest, respectively.

Making up the rest of the top 10 are Indonesia (566), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (556), France (530), Chad (528), Australia (494), Tanzania (465) and Japan (461).

The UK comes someway down the list with a delegation of 210.

(It is worth noting that some countries – such as Brazil – allocate some of their party badges to NGOs, which can artificially inflate the size of their official delegation.)

The smallest delegation is the one person registered to represent Nicaragua. There are five delegations of two people (North Korea, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Slovakia).

Ahead of COP30, Latvia's climate minister, told Reuters that the country had asked if its negotiators could dial into the summit by video call. However, Latvia does not appear to have registered any delegates to attend virtually.

In total, 40 parties registered virtual delegates. Party totals are all in single figures apart from the Philippines (31), Costa Rica (21) and Turkey (16).

Changing gender balance

The UNFCCC’s participant lists typically provide a title – such as Mr, Ms, Sr or Sra – for each registered delegate. In the past, this has allowed Carbon Brief to work out the balance of men to women in the delegations that each country has sent to a COP.

(This analysis always carries the caveat that the titles are designated by UNFCCC and not by Carbon Brief. In addition, Carbon Brief recognises that gender is not best categorised using a binary “man” or “woman” label and appreciates that the UNFCCC’s lists may not be wholly accurate.)

Overall, the COP30 provisional list suggests an average gender balance of party delegations of 57% men to 43% women.

As the chart below shows, this makes COP29 the most balanced COP in history. For consistency, the COP28, COP29 and COP30 figures only include those on party badges, not overflow ones.

(Note: Since COP28 last year, the UNFCCC has also used titles that do not indicate gender – such as Dr, Prof, Ambassador and Honourable. Therefore, for this analysis, these non-gendered titles – which make up 1% of all the people at COP30, for example – have not been included.)

The average percentage split between women (orange) and men (purple) across party delegations (excluding overflows) for each COP, according to titles given by the UNFCCC Data for COPs 1-29 collated from “final” participant lists published by the UNFCCC, while COP30 data is based on the “provisional” list. Note that a small number (<1%) of delegates are not included because there is no information on their gender. Chart by Carbon Brief.

There are four party delegations this year that are all men – Tuvalu (three delegates), Niger (three), North Korea (two) and Nicaragua (one) – and one that is all women (Nauru, with five delegates).

The full list of COP30 party delegation sizes can be found here.

(For previous COPs, see Carbon Brief’s delegate analysis for COP21, COP23, COP24, COP25, COP26, COP27, COP28, COP29)