China’s provincial-level governments have now all published their 15th five-year plans – economic and social development blueprints for 2026-2030.
These provincial plans reaffirm the overall trajectory of China’s energy transition, but reveal regional differences, based on economic and geographic considerations.
Provincial plans are a critical mechanism for showing how high-level targets from the central government will be translated into action.
For example, binding indicators set at national level include reductions in carbon intensity – carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per unit of economic output – and the proportion of non-fossil energy in total consumption.
Subsequent targets are then set for each province and tied to the performance evaluations of top local officials, who are ultimately responsible for delivery.
Similarly, provincial plans also build on qualitative policy directives in the national-level plan, such as further developing new-energy vehicles (NEVs) and hydrogen industries.
Specific policies, such as boosting production capacity, appear in several provincial-level plans.
Below, Carbon Brief analyses what the 31 documents say about energy and climate.
What do the provincial plans say about climate goals?
At the broad level, the new provincial plans follow China’s overarching climate goals. All 31 provincial-level jurisdictions in mainland China have pledged to peak carbon emissions before 2030.
Every plan also mentions the core elements of China’s energy transition strategy, including solar, wind, hydrogen, energy storage and upgrading the power grid.
While solar features in every plan, specific interests in the technology vary from province to province.
Some set goals to add new solar capacity by 2030. Zhejiang province aims to add 90GW of solar capacity, while Shaanxi plans to “accelerate” construction of wind and solar bases in the north of the province, as well as “solar+” models – such as “forest-solar” and “tea-solar” – in the south. Several plans mention developing offshore solar farms in the next five years.
However, others instead choose to focus on recycling old solar panels or strengthening solar R&D.
The chart below shows the frequency with which key climate and energy terms appeared in the 31 provincial-level five-year plans.
Almost every plan mentions growing consumption and production of NEVs. Growing the NEV industry is seen as an essential step to China becoming “a leading power in automobiles” and “a key strategic move” to address climate change, according to a plan for the sector’s development issued by the State Council in 2020.
Around 15 provinces pledge to promote NEV uptake. Jilin set a target for NEVs comprising more than 50% of new car sales by 2030, although its current rate is already thought to be 47%.
While the central government is issuing directives to limit “overcapacity” in the sector, more than 20 provinces say they will continue developing their NEV industries, with many aiming to generate hundreds of billions – or even trillions – of yuan in value.
Among them are established NEV manufacturing bases such as Shanghai and Chongqing.
Meanwhile, 24 provinces will prioritise developing renewable power “direct connection” models, in which renewable generators supply industrial users via a dedicated line – a system that could boost consumption of clean energy.
Provinces diverge in terms of what other technologies they name and how detailed their plans are.
For example, offshore wind and nuclear are mentioned by 11 and 12 provinces respectively, with both technologies mostly targeted to be built in coastal provinces.
Inland provinces, such as Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang, instead focus on developing wind and solar farms across desert regions.
But in general, variation reflects more than just geography or resources endowment, says Anders Hove, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
“The differences between provinces reflect primarily differences in economic development capabilities and industrial structure,” he tells Carbon Brief.
Yang Li, deputy executive director at the Beijing-based thinktank Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP), echoes this, stating that the variation reflects differences in the resources available to provinces and their own strategic positioning.
Provinces are also increasingly discussing how to manage the decommissioning of solar and windfarms.
Around 19 provinces have set out plans to recycle old clean-energy equipment, a topic that featured in few plans in the previous five-year cycle. While most of the plans that mention the goal only briefly flagged the issue, Inner Mongolia, Jiangsu, Jiangxi and Qinghai have pledged to create dedicated recycling parks or industrial clusters.
How do provinces talk about fossil fuels?
Almost every province has pledged to peak coal and oil consumption, in line with similar language in the national-level plan.
However, 17 local governments also pledge to produce more fossil fuels – trying to peak consumption while also expanding output, opening new reserves or lifting production limits.
Most of these are western and northern regions designated as national energy-supply bases, including Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Shanxi, Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang.
Yang tells Carbon Brief this pattern reflects the “two dimensions of China’s [energy] transition”, namely a national-level push for peaking fossil-fuel consumption and a desire for energy security by provinces rich in energy resources.
Provinces that host significant fossil-fuel economies are also the most likely to mention carbon capture and storage, as well as curbs on non-CO2 greenhouse gases.
Carbon capture and efforts to deal with methane, another potent greenhouse gas, appear in 14 plans.
All the provincial plans mention gas. Unlike consumption of coal and oil, which almost every province has pledged to peak, no province has proposed capping gas use.
Several provinces set explicit targets to expand gas production. Sichuan aims for annual gas production of 70bn cubic metres, while Inner Mongolia is targeting 32bn cubic metres by the end of 2030.
Others plan on generally expanding gas extraction, utilisation and infrastructure. Guangdong plans to build several new gas-fired power plants while Henan and Hubei will “accelerate” exploration for and development of oil and gas fields.
Provinces such as Heilongjiang, Sichuan, Chongqing and Tianjin will expand gas storage and pipeline connectivity, framing the fuel as a way to ensure energy security.
Gas occupies a small position in China’s overall energy mix, accounting for 8-9% of primary energy demand and 7% of CO2 emissions. It nevertheless remains a relatively large source of energy for some provinces, such as the industrial hub of Guangdong.
It has often been referred to as a “bridging fuel” that can help countries move away from coal use, with several of China’s policies in the 2010s encouraging coal-to-gas switching. However, in China its growth has slowed in recent years in the face of unreliable supplies and large additions of wind and solar capacity.
Provincial plans to expand gas output, Yang argues, reflect China’s aims to increase overall energy supply under its energy security strategy.
As such, she says, it “should not be viewed as a simple trade-off” between China’s climate and energy security goals. Instead, it is an “inevitable stage” in the country’s “build before breaking” strategy for the energy transition, through which China “maintains a certain level” of fossil-fuel production in the “short- to medium-term” while further developing clean-energy capacity.
What do provinces say about AI and hydrogen?
With the national government preparing to spend trillions of yuan on datacentres for the artificial intelligence (AI) industry in the next five years, provincial officials are also tying AI to their energy systems.
More than 20 aim to use AI to help manage coal mines, power grids, oilfields and forecasting renewables output.
Sichuan, for example, has pledged to apply AI “large language models” across “power grids, power generation, coal and oil and gas”. Shanxi states that it will build a dedicated AI model “for the energy industry”, as well as AI systems for forecasting grid loads and controlling coal mining equipment.
Yang says that “AI+energy” represents a desire by policymakers to use AI to enhance energy governance, but adds that “large-scale commercialisation [of the technology] still has some way to go”.
Hove compares current mentions of using AI in the energy system to similar references in previous plans to concepts such as big data and “Internet Plus”.
Such language, he argues, is “uncontroversial” and its inclusion can be accepted by a wide range of different groups. But he adds that, in his view, AI will not resolve the institutional barriers and market incentives that are currently restricting broader consumption of renewable energy.
Unlike AI, all provincial plans mention hydrogen, which is named as a “future industry” in the central-level five-year plan.
For example, Hunan calls for promoting hydrogen trucks and rail transport and developing “renewable energy-based” hydrogen production, while Shandong pledges to focus on technological breakthroughs around hydrogen transport and storage, as well as production of green hydrogen.
Similarly, 12 provinces name the other energy-related future industry – nuclear fusion, which remains an experimental technology – as a priority for the next five years. These provinces include Anhui, Guangdong, Hebei, Hubei and Shaanxi.
The post Q&A: What do China’s provincial five-year plans say about climate and energy? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What do China’s provincial five-year plans say about climate and energy?
Global fossil-fuel emissions are set to fall by around 0.5% in 2026 amid the fallout from the Hormuz crisis, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
The US-Iran war has severely disrupted trade through the strait of Hormuz, causing a spike in oil and gas prices that continues to ripple around the global economy.
Each month of disruption – and each new flashpoint, such as in Yemen – is increasing the incentive to switch to alternatives.
Those alternatives include coal, with the latest forecasts pointing to a 1.2% rise in coal demand this year – apparently supporting media claims of a “return to coal” in the wake of the crisis.
Yet Carbon Brief’s analysis shows the rise in emissions associated with this increased coal use, much of which is unrelated to Hormuz, is set to be more than offset by declines for oil and gas.
The estimated overall impact on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels in 2026 is shown in the figure below and amounts to a reduction of around 0.5% from 2025 levels.
(Fossil fuels account for two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions.)
The emissions estimates for each fossil fuel are based on the latest forecasts from the International Energy Agency (IEA) for coal, oil and gas, in light of the ongoing global energy crisis.
For example, the agency initially estimated that global coal demand would decline this year. In its 2025 coal report, published in mid-December, it said that declining coal demand in China would outweigh the impact of pro-coal policies under US president Donald Trump.
In contrast, the latest update, published in September 2026, said that global coal demand would rise by 1.2% in 2026, instead of the small decline that had been expected.
The report highlighted the boost to coal demand from higher gas prices in the wake of Hormuz. However, there are limits to this, because few countries can switch from gas to coal at large scale.
The IEA’s latest report also noted the role of a strong El Niño, which is pushing up the need for cooling and depressing hydropower output in key markets. Other short-term factors are also affecting coal demand this year, including a rising amount of “wasted” wind and solar in China.
For gas, the IEA did not initially update its previous forecast that global gas demand would rise by 2.0% in 2026, which had been published in January of this year.
Its most recent forecast – published in July – already pointed to a 0.6% drop in demand in 2026. Since then, pressure on gas demand from high prices has only grown stronger.
For oil, there has been an even more dramatic shift in forecasts since the start of the year.
In its January 2026 oil market report, the IEA forecast a rise in demand in 2026 of 930,000 barrels per day (bpd). As shown in the figure below, this has been steadily revised downwards over the course of the year, as the Hormuz crisis was first ignited – and then extended.
By September, the IEA was forecasting a 2,500,000bpd drop in oil demand in 2026, equivalent to a reduction of 2.4% from 2025 levels.
(A 15 September research note from Morgan Stanley, not available online, found a “consensus” forecast of a 2,415,000bpd drop in demand in 2026.)
While there are many short-term factors at play in the shifting forecasts for 2026, it is clear that the latest energy crisis will also affect fossil-fuel demand in the next year and beyond.
For example, whereas the IEA initially forecast that oil demand would rebound in 2027 to well above 2025 levels, it is now expecting use of the fuel to be effectively flat for two years.
This puts a question mark over its previous expectation – published in October last year – that global oil demand would not peak until as late as 2030.
“For every month the conflict lasts, the probability of permanent [oil] demand destruction increases,” wrote Sverre Alvik, vice president at consultancy DNV in a late August analysis.
As fuel prices have surged, electric vehicles (EVs) have captured record shares of major car markets, from Australia and China through to Europe, Indonesia and Thailand.
In July, EV sales nearly doubled year-on-year in “new markets”, noted Alvik, pointing to countries outside China, Europe and North America.
The IEA says the 2027 outlooks for coal and gas are interdependent, with coal demand potentially increasing again if gas prices remain elevated – or dropping back if gas prices ease.
At the same time, governments in countries that had planned to rely on imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have been signalling shifts towards favouring domestic clean energy instead – or continuing to use coal for longer.
The current crisis, therefore, has the potential to not only lower fossil-fuel use and emissions in the short term, but also on a more lasting basis.
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Q&A: What do China’s provincial five-year plans say about climate and energy?
The post Analysis: Global fossil-fuel emissions set to fall in 2026 amid Hormuz crisis appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Global fossil-fuel emissions set to fall in 2026 amid Hormuz crisis
Aviation is on track to be responsible for 80% of the UK’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
Emissions from flying have more than doubled since 1990 – driven by rising passenger numbers – even as the climate impact of every other sector in the UK economy has fallen.
The UK does not have “credible” policies in place to reverse this trend of rising emissions, says the CCC in new advice to the government on future aviation policy.
The government has signalled its support for expanding Heathrow, the nation’s largest airport, while relying on “techno-fixes” such as “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs) to cut emissions.
Yet, even without Heathrow expansion, the CCC says aviation emissions are on track to be higher in 2050 than they are today – reaching 38m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2).
As the chart below shows, this would account for most of the remaining CO2 from the UK economy, all of which would need to be removed from the atmosphere in order to meet the legal target of net-zero emissions.
Expanding Heathrow would add another 2.4MtCO2 in 2050, amounting to around 5% of all the UK’s emissions. (This would increase to 4.5MtCO2 when expansion is complete in 2054.)
With a final decision on Heathrow expansion expected by 2029, the government asked the CCC for its advice on whether the plan is compatible with the UK’s climate targets.
The CCC has concluded that the UK simply lacks sufficient policies to reduce aviation emissions and “expanding Heathrow would compound the problem”. In a press briefing, CCC chair Nigel Topping told journalists:
“The UK does not currently have a credible plan to reduce [aviation emissions] in line with net-zero, so that creates a serious challenge for meeting our climate commitments.”
The “jet-zero strategy”, launched by the previous Conservative government in 2022, set out plans to cut aviation emissions. However, the Labour government has since accepted that the strategy’s expectations for SAFs, electric planes and fuel-efficiency improvements were unrealistic.
The CCC says a “credible and robust net-zero policy framework for aviation” should be set out in a revised strategy, which is planned for 2027. Only then could Heathrow expansion be aligned with the net-zero goal, adds the committee.
As part of this new strategy, the CCC says the “aviation sector needs to take responsibility for its emissions”. It says policies should be designed based on the “polluter pays” principle, requiring the aviation industry to fund its own SAFs and CO2 removal.
Specifically, the committee says funding will be needed for “engineered removal” technologies, such as direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS).
These technologies are currently “not yet available at the scale required”, but are vital for the kind of permanent CO2 removal needed to mop up aviation emissions, says the CCC.
(“Natural solutions” such as tree planting are the other main way CO2 is expected to be removed from the atmosphere. However, the CCC envisages these removals offsetting the remaining methane emissions from livestock agriculture in the UK, whereas it says “engineered removals” would be required to remove and store CO2 from flights.)
The CCC acknowledges that placing decarbonisation costs on airlines would likely lead to higher ticket prices. It estimates that this could mean an increase, in 2024 prices, of around £150 for a return trip to Alicante, Spain, and £400 for a return trip to New York by 2050.
However, it says this is preferable to a public spending approach, which would result in the roughly 50% of the population who do not fly paying for flight-related CO2 removals.
In addition, the committee notes that higher costs would help to manage demand for flights, which would otherwise be expected to increase considerably over the coming decades.
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The post CCC: Heathrow expansion could push flights to ‘80% of UK emissions by 2050’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
CCC: Heathrow expansion could push flights to ‘80% of UK emissions by 2050’
A fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions are linked to international trade in goods and services, a new tracker shows, spotlighting a little-studied issue that researchers say should be tackled by the UN climate process.
Currently, as part of the Paris Agreement, every country is responsible for counting and reducing the planet-heating emissions that are produced within its territory. Manufacturing countries, for example, may have high emissions even if what they make is exported for consumption elsewhere.
But new analysis from the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and climate consultancy Matière, based on the tracker’s data, shows that some countries have a high footprint of “imported emissions” from goods and services they ship in. These emissions are often ignored in the places where the products are consumed because they are not formally counted under greenhouse gas inventories.
In the European Union, for example, while domestic emissions have declined since 2015, imported emissions have remained unchanged, the analysis shows. In some countries, like Austria or Sweden, they are as high as the country’s entire annual carbon footprint.
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Former EU lead climate negotiator Jacob Werksman said that under the Paris Agreement, these traded emissions are accounted for in the countries where they are originally produced, but importing countries can also take responsibility for their consumption.
“It starts with a wide recognition by many jurisdictions around the world that we need to know the carbon content of these products, and we then need to agree what is a fair, effective, transparent and relatively easy-to-implement way of measuring that carbon in traded products,” he told a launch event for the trade emissions tracker, which contains data for different countries, sectors and gases.
Trade and its role in addressing climate change has become a higher priority at UN climate talks after a push led by emerging economies including China, India and South Africa led to the first trade and climate change dialogue held this year at the mid-year session in Bonn.
At the upcoming COP31 UN summit in Antalya, some voluntary initiatives like the Brazil-led Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade are expected to continue, but the issue does not feature in Türkiye’s Action Agenda of climate initiatives and formal negotiations are not scheduled on the topic.
China: the world’s top emissions exporter
As a manufacturing powerhouse, China ranks first in the new tracker as the world’s top-emitting country, but the data shows that a large chunk of the country’s carbon emissions – an amount larger than Brazil’s entire annual carbon footprint – are linked to products that are exported and consumed abroad.
Russia, Brazil, the US and the EU rank as the top destinations for Chinese trade-related emissions, which are mostly linked to components for power generation, basic metals like copper and lead, and non-metallic minerals like graphite and phosphorus.
Yet China is also the world’s top emissions importer, related mostly to agricultural products, fossil fuels and minerals brought from the US, the EU, Japan and India, among others. The US ranks second by a close margin, with both countries importing about 1.6 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
China’s industrial engine starts to break its fossil fuel habit
Richard Baron, ECF’s industrial policy and trade director, said Chinese clean energy products are key for reducing emissions around the world, adding that Europe is “not able to do without those technologies” for its energy transition.
“China has an emissions trading system that counts CO2 differently there. But if China and the EU were to agree on some kind of translation mechanism to say ‘this is how we measure it’, and companies can understand the protocol to navigate both markets, that would set the tone for a lot of other conversations,” he said at the platform’s launch event last week.
The analysis suggests that if the EU and China aligned their climate requirements for products, the resulting standards could influence trade flows representing about 7% of global emissions.
Baron said there’s “a plethora” of multilateral spaces to hold these discussions, including the climate and trade dialogue at the UN climate talks or the Climate Club at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which seeks to cut industrial emissions.
Trade breaks into agenda of UN climate talks – but will it have teeth?
Controversial trade measures
Instruments like the Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) – a recent piece of legislation that penalises emissions-heavy imported products – are one tool that could be used to address trade-related emissions, said Antoine Oger, executive director at the Institute for European Environmental Policy.
He said a significant portion of imported emissions in Europe are already covered by CBAM, as it includes sectors like cement, iron and steel, fertilisers and aluminium. This then allows the EU “to engage in constructive dialogue with our trade partners”, he added.
But across diplomatic summits, including at UN climate talks, emerging economies have pushed back heavily against the CBAM and other trade measures. The most recent BRICS declaration adopted on Saturday by 11 such countries – including China, India and Russia – condemns “protectionism under the guise of environmental objectives”.
The declaration calls for the “elimination of such unlawful measures”, which they argue have “far-reaching negative implications for the human rights, including the rights to development, health and food security” of vulnerable communities.
“The question of responsibility is a political question,” Oger said. “These emissions exist – they are emitted somewhere to make a product that will be consumed elsewhere. So you can debate responsibility but the idea is for the two parts to recognise there’s a problem.”
The aim, he added “is not to point fingers, but to accept this is a reality of our emissions profiles and ask what we can do about it”.
The post International trade linked to 20% of global emissions – but imports ignored appeared first on Climate Home News.
International trade linked to 20% of global emissions – but imports ignored
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