Have CO2 emissions in China peaked? A 3% fall in March gives reason to hope
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China is the world’s top carbon polluter, but also by far the largest investor and producer of wind and solar energy.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
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SINGAPORE - If there is one question energy analysts and climate scientists want answered, it is this: Have carbon emissions in China finally peaked?
China is the world’s top carbon polluter, emitting nearly a third of all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions linked to human activity, and those emissions are a major driver of climate change.
It is also by far the largest investor in and producer of wind and solar energy. How the country manages the transition to a clean energy economy has lessons for all other nations – and the pace of global climate change.
While it is too early to say for sure if emissions have peaked, China’s carbon emissions fell 3 per cent year on year in March 2024, ending a 14-month surge following the lifting of Covid-zero controls,
The main causes for the drop are expanding solar and wind generation, as well as declining construction activity caused by the ailing property sector.
Electricity demand has continued to increase rapidly in China, growing 7.4 per cent year on year in March, but record additions of wind and solar in 2023 helped meet 90 per cent of this additional demand.
The pace of growth of new green energy capacity has continued into 2024, noted the analysis published by Carbon Brief, a British climate news site. The analysis is based on official figures and commercial data.
Mr Lauri Myllyvirta, the author of the analysis and a senior fellow at Asia Society Policy Institute, said that emissions from steel and cement production – large carbon polluting sectors – fell sharply in March, reflecting the contraction of the construction sector.
He said the slowdown strengthens the view that China’s CO2 emissions might have peaked in 2023, but that this trend would become clearer only after more months of data.
“The key message from my analysis up to March is that emissions are currently in a structural decline and if the key drivers of that decline – clean energy additions, the fading importance of the construction sector – continue, emissions should keep falling,” said Helsinki-based Mr Myllyvirta, who is also lead analyst for the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a research organisation registered in Finland.
Other key points in the report:
Wind and solar growth pushed fossil fuels’ share of electricity generation in China down to 63.6 per cent in March 2024, from 67.4 per cent a year earlier.
Steel production fell by 8 per cent and cement output by 22 per cent in March 2024.
Electric vehicles now make up around one in 10 vehicles on China’s roads, knocking around 3.5 percentage points off the growth in petrol demand.
Oil demand for transport was unchanged from a year earlier – following months of strong increases – suggesting that the post-Covid-19 rebound could be petering out. Coal use also fell 1 per cent in March.
Burning coal, oil and gas are the main sources of CO2 – the main greenhouse gas – and pressure is growing to hasten the switch to greener energy to try to limit the pace of climate change.
The world is facing growing risks from more extreme weather, such as more intense floods and storms, hotter and longer heatwaves and rising sea levels.
The United Nations’ top climate science panel says that global carbon emissions must peak by 2025 and fall by at least 43 per cent by 2030 compared with 2019 levels. Failure would mean the world breaching the key guardrail of 1.5 deg C of warming above pre-industrial levels.
President Xi Jinping has pledged that China would reach its carbon emissions peak before 2030 and become “carbon-neutral” before 2060.
Mr Myllyvirta told The Straits Times: “The message is not that China’s emissions have definitively peaked. It is that with the current trends, China definitively has the ability to peak emissions right now, but whether that happens depends on key energy and economic policy choices.”
What happens with power generation will be key. China remains heavily dependent on polluting coal for power generation, and weaning the country off the fuel is essential to slashing emissions. Burning coal is the country’s single-largest source of CO2.
Wind and solar power is also being rolled out at a furious pace, and this is expected to lead to a steady decline in the use of coal.
In 2023, China added nearly 300GW of new wind and solar capacity connected to the grid, by far the largest annual additions for any nation.
And the green boom accelerated in the first three months of 2024, with a 40 per cent increase compared with the year before, said the analysis.
But more policy steps are needed to fully absorb all of this green energy into the different grids across the nation, it said.
Mr Myllyvirta added: “For a sustained decline in emissions to be realised, most of the reductions in emissions have to come from the power sector, which is entirely plausible if the clean energy additions are maintained.”
