Has China passed peak emissions?

China’s greenhouse gas emissions show something important. The rolling 12-mointh totals for March 2024 were higher than for any subsequent month. By October 2025 emissions had fallen 1.2%. According Carbon Brief, 11/11/2025, to this is due to a combination of factors:

·         Reduction of oil use in the transport sector due to the increase in electric vehicles. Emissions fell 5% in one year.

·         Installation of lots more wind and solar capacity 240 gigawatts (GW) of solar and 61GW of wind in the first nine months of 2025 alone.

·         Big increases in the generation of electricity from wind and solar kept total power sector emissions flat despite an increase in electricity demand. Here, at least, decoupling is real.

·         Offsetting this, emissions from the production of plastics and chemicals rose.

It’s too soon to say that China’s emissions peaked in March 2024. The drop from then to November 2025 was small beer by China’s standards. The economy might do something unexpected or a change in, say, regulation of the power sector might reverse recent gains.

But it is a big deal that we must consider whether the emissions of the world’s fastest growing economy has passed peak emissions.

What’s clear is that the accelerating growth in renewable generation and electric traction on the roads will outrun demand growth soon, even if not this year. Four conclusions:

·         Growth in China’s green sectors, and thus in global numbers, will continue to accelerate.

·         Decoupling of emissions from the economy is real, at least in China.

·         By modelling success, reducing prices and aggressive selling China will drive the green transition in many other countries.

·         This will advance China’s claim to be a more useful and consistent trade partner and technology supplier than the USA. Trump’s erratic and absurd behaviour contributes strongly to this as well.

 

 

Unpopular Opnion 2: The Climate Saboteurs are Winning

Every year the climate COP is followed by complaints about how little has been achieved, praise for the small amount that has been achieved and resolutions to do better next time. Well-informed people such as Rachel Kyte, some from climate-aware governments, can be heard saying how hard it is to get broad agreement on difficult issues. This sounds sensible.

But its bullshit.

The truth – as everyone knows – is that the COP process has been sabotaged by countries that want, very much, for there NOT to be an effective agreement to reduce emissions. They are the petrostates and the big fossil fuel companies, the ‘Big Heaters’. The leading petrostate is Saudi Arabia, though in the last year the USA has become the most effective climate saboteur. (We all know why.)

For the saboteurs, every year without an effective agreement is another year of selling coal, gas and oil and everything made from them. Those things include plastics, fertilisers, tar and lubricants. They form a big slice of the global economy.

It’s often said that the climate saboteurs have been successful because COP rules require unanimity but that’s a bit superficial. They have also succeeded because in many countries they have paid taxes and created jobs for decades. Those countries have been reluctant to challenge such generous corporate citizens.

And where taxes and jobs have not been enough they have been able to bribe countries, parties and politicians who might oppose them. Or just invade them.

The saboteurs have often felt the need for support from people who not directly employed. There are openly paid sabotage enablers in the engineering, investment, policy and insurance sectors.

And in case that wasn’t enough there is a loose network of academics, think tanks and political parties that benefit from the largesse of the petrostates and the Big Heaters. They can be relied on to claim that climate change isn’t real, or doesn’t matter, or can’t be avoided, or on which action should be delayed until – well – something else happens. Anything but support the crisis action that is already overdue.

There’s much more to say but it will have to wait.

I finish with this. We must stop talking about climate policy failures as if they were honest errors. They aren’t. They are the results of sabotage by vested interests which must be called out and resisted.