China's Emissions Plateau Reaches 21 Months as Clean Energy Growth Faces Coal Expansion

Clean Electricity Pushes China Toward an Earlier Emissions Peak

China's carbon dioxide emissions remained flat or declined for 21 consecutive months, with an estimated 1% fall in the final quarter of 2025 and a likely 0.3% decline across the full year. The stretch is the country's longest recorded period of emissions stabilization that was not driven by an economic crisis, raising the possibility that the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter could reach its peak years before its official 2030 target.

The estimates come from analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) for Carbon Brief. As of February 13, 2026, the central development is that expanding clean electricity supplies are holding down emissions while economic activity continues to grow. Earlier emissions dips in 2009, 2012, 2015 and 2022 were linked to financial crises, pandemic restrictions or construction slumps.

China produces more than one-third of global carbon dioxide output. Its direction therefore carries considerable weight in whether worldwide emissions can stabilize in time to meet the Paris Agreement's goals for limiting temperature rise. A sustained decline in China would affect the global total, while renewed growth would make that task harder.

The strongest evidence of change comes from electricity. Power sector emissions fell by 1.5% in 2025 even though electricity demand increased by 520 terawatt hours. Solar, wind and nuclear generation together supplied approximately 530 terawatt hours of additional clean electricity, enough to cover all of that growth.

Coal construction and expanding chemical production are pulling in the opposite direction. China commissioned 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity in 2025, while chemical manufacturing emissions rose by 12%. The next major policy milestone is the 15th Five-Year Plan, scheduled for release in March 2026, which will set the direction through 2030.

How Clean Power Covered Rising Electricity Demand

Solar electricity generation rose by 43% in 2025 compared with the previous year, wind generation increased by 14%, and nuclear generation grew by 8%. Together, their approximately 530 terawatt hours of additional output exceeded the 520 terawatt hours of new demand by about 10 terawatt hours.

Terawatt hours measure the amount of electricity generated or consumed over time. Gigawatts, used to describe power plants and storage systems, measure how much power they can supply at a given moment. The difference matters: building more generating capacity helps reduce emissions when it produces electricity that would otherwise come from fossil fuels.

China also added a record 75 gigawatts of energy storage capacity in 2025. That exceeded the 55 gigawatt increase in peak electricity demand by 20 gigawatts. Peak demand is the highest level of electricity use at a particular time, when the grid faces its greatest pressure.

Storage gives grid managers another way to meet those busy periods. Electricity can be stored when supplies are available and released when consumption rises, providing an alternative to relying on fossil fuel plants for backup. The expansion helps connect growing clean electricity production with the hours when households and businesses need it.

Solar and Wind Expansion Becomes an Economic Engine

China added 240 gigawatts of solar capacity in the first nine months of 2025 alone. That followed a record 333 gigawatts installed in 2024, an amount greater than the rest of the world combined. Renewable deployment has exceeded even the most optimistic projections made earlier in the decade.

Wind additions reached 61 gigawatts over the same nine months of 2025. Industry associations forecast annual installations of 105 to 120 gigawatts through 2026, pointing to continued growth in the equipment available to generate clean electricity.

Clean energy technologies contributed more than one-third of China's economic growth in 2025. Electric vehicles, batteries and solar power, known as the new three sectors, generated USD 1.1 trillion in added value. Their expansion is changing the relationship between economic growth and emissions: industries that support growth are also supplying the equipment used to reduce fossil fuel consumption.

China manufactures more than 80% of the world's solar panels, 60% of its wind turbines, and 75% of its electric vehicles and their batteries. Those shares make the country the dominant supplier of technologies used in the clean energy transition, even as it works to lower emissions within its own economy.

The manufacturing figures and electricity figures describe two connected changes. Factories are producing more clean energy equipment, and power systems are using that equipment to meet rising demand. In 2025, the additional clean generation was large enough for power sector emissions to fall while electricity use increased.

Electric Vehicles Reduce Transport Emissions

Transport emissions fell by 3% in 2025 as electric vehicles took more than 40% of new vehicle sales. More than 12 million new energy vehicles were produced and sold domestically, extending the shift away from vehicles that depend entirely on oil.

Battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids together accounted for 8.9% of all vehicles on Chinese roads. Battery electric vehicles run on electricity stored in a battery. Plug-in hybrids combine a battery that can be charged with an engine that uses fuel.

The two percentages describe different parts of the transition. The share above 40% concerns new purchases, while the 8.9% figure concerns the whole fleet already on the road. New sales can change quickly, but the total fleet changes as vehicles are added and older ones are replaced.

Growing use of these vehicles is displacing oil demand that previously helped drive emissions growth. Their rapid adoption illustrates how investment in infrastructure can speed a sector's move toward lower emissions within a single market cycle. Alongside falling power emissions, the transport decline shows that the change extends beyond electricity generation.

Chemicals Offset Declines in Other Industries

Industrial emissions moved in different directions in 2025. Emissions from cement production fell by 7%, while those from the metal industry declined by 3%, reflecting continued weakness in real estate construction. Chemical manufacturing moved sharply upward, with emissions increasing by 12%.

The chemicals increase was driven by a 15% rise in coal use and a 10% increase in oil consumption as the industry expanded capacity for plastics and synthetic materials. The sector already accounts for roughly 13% of China's national carbon dioxide emissions, giving its growth a substantial effect on the total.

Without the increase from chemicals, China's emissions would have fallen by an estimated 2% in 2025 rather than 0.3%. The difference of about 1.7 percentage points shows how much this one sector offset reductions elsewhere in the economy.

China's expansion of coal-to-chemicals production is also tied to energy security and trade tensions. These plants convert coal into chemical feedstocks, the raw materials used to make other products, and into synthetic fuels. Increasing domestic production is a way to reduce dependence on imported oil and gas, particularly amid tariff disputes with the United States.

Current expansion plans could lock in years of additional emissions growth if fully implemented. The same effort to reduce reliance on imported energy could therefore make it harder to sustain the national emissions decline. Chemicals have become a central pressure point because their growth is large enough to counter progress in power, transport and construction materials.

Coal Plants Keep Expanding as Generation Falls

China commissioned 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity in 2025, the highest annual level in a decade, even as total coal generation declined. Another 291 gigawatts remained in the development pipeline, already permitted or under construction.

Capacity and generation describe different things. Capacity is the amount of power plants can produce when operating; generation is the electricity they actually produce over time. China's figures show an expanding fleet of coal plants alongside a decline in their combined electricity output.

New coal plants create a risk of stranded assets, investments that may become unable to earn the returns expected when they were built. If these plants instead operate for their full planned lifetimes, their emissions could slow the transition toward cleaner energy.

The China Coal Association expects coal use in steel and building materials to fall. It nevertheless anticipates continued growth in coal consumption by the power sector and chemical industry until at least 2027. Those expectations underline the tension between falling emissions in some activities and continued investment in coal elsewhere.

March's Five-Year Plan Will Set the Next Targets

The 15th Five-Year Plan, scheduled for release in March 2026, will establish binding targets for energy intensity, renewable capacity and industrial restructuring through 2030. Energy intensity measures the energy used to produce a unit of economic output. Carbon intensity measures the carbon dioxide emitted for that output.

China has already exceeded several commitments for 2030 under the Paris Agreement. Its target of 1,200 gigawatts of combined wind and solar capacity was passed in 2024, when the total reached 1,400 gigawatts. That was 200 gigawatts above the target, six years before 2030.

Carbon intensity has fallen more slowly than planned. The 14th Five-Year Plan required an 18% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP between 2020 and 2025. The actual reduction reached only 12%, leaving a gap of six percentage points.

Meeting the 2030 goal of cutting carbon intensity by 65% from its 2005 level would now require a reduction of approximately 23% over the next five years. That would mean a much faster pace of improvement than the 12% achieved during 2020 to 2025.

The government work plan for 2025 did not set a carbon intensity target, signaling that meeting this goal was not being treated as a current priority. The March plan will help determine whether policy supports a lasting emissions decline or leaves room for a rebound before 2030.

A New Absolute Target and Zero-Carbon Factories

China submitted its 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution in November 2025. A Nationally Determined Contribution is a country's climate commitment under the Paris Agreement. China's submission committed it to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases across the economy, measured on a net basis, by 7 to 10% from their peak by 2035.

The commitment is Beijing's first absolute emissions reduction target, rather than a goal based on emissions per unit of economic output. An absolute target concerns the total amount emitted. An intensity target concerns how much is emitted for each unit of GDP, so the total also depends on how much the economy grows.

Analysts consider the 2035 commitment conservative because existing policies could deliver reductions of 10 to 16% under optimistic scenarios. The submission also raises the target for the share of energy from non-fossil sources to above 30% by 2035 and sets a wind and solar capacity target of 3,600 gigawatts.

Chinese authorities have also launched an initiative to develop zero-carbon factories. Pilot programs are planned in automobiles, lithium batteries, photovoltaics and electronics by 2027, with expansion into steel, petrochemicals and textiles by 2030. Photovoltaics refers to technology that turns sunlight into electricity.

The factory framework calls for renewable energy microgrids, carbon accounting systems and intelligent management technologies. Microgrids are local electricity networks; carbon accounting tracks emissions associated with operations. By the end of 2025, China had cultivated 6,430 national-level green factories, whose output value represented 20% of manufacturing industry output value.

The Dates That Frame China's Climate Shift

China's current plateau sits between targets already exceeded and decisions still approaching. The sequence shows how rapid clean energy construction has moved ahead of some commitments while emissions efficiency has fallen short of another.

• 2020 to 2025: Carbon intensity fell by 12%, against the 14th Five-Year Plan's required reduction of 18%.
• 2024: Combined wind and solar capacity reached 1,400 gigawatts, passing the 1,200 gigawatt target for 2030.
• November 2025: China submitted its 2035 climate commitment, including a 7 to 10% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions from their peak.
• March 2026: The 15th Five-Year Plan is scheduled for release, setting targets through 2030.
• 2027: Zero-carbon factory pilots are planned in the first group of industries.
• 2030: China faces its official emissions peak target and plans to expand factory pilots into further industries.
• 2035: The new emissions reduction, non-fossil energy and wind and solar targets are due.

The permanent peak has not yet been confirmed. A rebound remains possible if economic stimulus favors construction that produces large amounts of carbon emissions, or if chemical industry expansion continues unabated.

Global Stakes and a Contrasting US Direction

Global carbon dioxide emissions from energy use reached a record 37.8 gigatons in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency. Against that total, an early Chinese peak offers hope that worldwide emissions could begin declining this decade.

Seven in ten experts now expect Chinese emissions to peak by 2030. Recent surveys by CREA and the International Society for Energy Transition Studies identified 2028 as the most likely year. Weather adds uncertainty: extreme heat waves in 2024 forced China to increase coal generation to meet cooling demand, contributing approximately 100 megatons of additional carbon dioxide emissions.

Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at CREA, described why a small movement in the annual total carries political importance while policymakers continue to allow room for emissions growth:

While an emission increase or decrease of 1 per cent or less might not make a huge difference in an objective sense, it has heightened symbolic meaning, as China's policymakers have left room for emissions to increase for several more years, leaving the timing of the peak open.

The contrast with United States climate policy has sharpened. The Trump administration has moved to revoke the 2009 endangerment finding, which provides the legal basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and has ordered the Department of Defense to increase purchases of electricity generated from coal.

China now occupies two central positions in the global climate effort: it is the largest emitter and the largest investor in clean energy transition technologies. Its 2025 results show clean electricity and electric vehicles reducing emissions, while chemicals and new coal plants continue to create pressure for growth.

The Bottom Line

• China's carbon dioxide emissions stayed flat or fell for 21 consecutive months, with a likely 0.3% decline across 2025.
• New solar, wind and nuclear generation supplied approximately 530 terawatt hours, covering the 520 terawatt hours of additional electricity demand.
• Power emissions fell by 1.5% and transport emissions by 3%, while chemical manufacturing emissions rose by 12%.
• China commissioned 78 gigawatts of coal power capacity in 2025, with another 291 gigawatts permitted or under construction.
• The 15th Five-Year Plan is scheduled for March 2026, following a carbon intensity reduction of 12% against an 18% target for 2020 to 2025.
• China's 2035 commitment calls for net greenhouse gas emissions to fall by 7 to 10% from their peak.