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.

Why did she lie?

This afternoon (Saturday November 21st) I heard a radio report from Belem. The BBC interviewed Rachel Kyte the UK Special Representative for Climate. She said that getting agreement at a COP was very hard and that '193 countries were trying to get the best result'. It sounds measured, sensible and diplomatic. But its not true. 

The best result for the planet would be an enforceable and explicit agreement to eliminate all use of fossil fuels by 2050 - ideally sooner. Kyte is a Professor of Practice in Climate Policy so she knows this.

She also knows - she even said in her interview - that some countries are trying to prevent the final declaration from even mentioning fossil fuels. As I write the current draft does not mention fossil fuels. These countries - Saudi Arabia leads the pack - are not trying to get the best result but the result that is best for their countries or their typically undemocratic regimes. 

So Kyte is saying thing she knows to be untrue. In any other context we call that lying. Why should politics be different? It is lying and we should tell our representatives not to do it.

Unpopular Opinion 1: 1.5C is dead

In the Paris Agreement the nations of the world agreed to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” It was always an ambitious target and we’ve missed it.

The global annual temperature increase first exceeded 1.5C last year. Climate scientists were surprised at the speed at which it rose and have stressed the impact of a strong El Nino event. This allows them to say that the long-term trend has not taken the temperature over the second Paris Agreement target. Probably true. But so what?

The temperature has exceeded the target and – to coin a phrase – the climate doesn’t care about special factors. Up is up. 2025 will probably be a little cooler but it will be the second or third warmest year on record. Then the increase will resume.

We can be a bit more formal. The admirable Global Carbon Project (GCP) has calculated the remaining carbon budget for an annual temperature of 1.5C at 170 GtonnesCO2. That’s almost exactly four times the likely 2025 emissions. Last year emissions rose by 0.8%; similar to the previous four years. The UN Shared Socioeconomic Pathway that best fits the data (SSP2-4.5) shows annual emissions rising until about 2040. That would exhaust the 1.5C budget within a little less than four years so we'll exceed the target unless we reach Net Zero in 2029.

Surely I’m joking? Yes. Short of a nuclear winter that won’t happen.

So we cannot keep the temperature increase below 1.5C. The target is dead. And I’m not alone in saying so. Michael Le Page said the same in New Scientist last month (19/10/25) as did Hannah Ritchie of Sustainability By Numbers this month.

That matters a lot.

The clear evidence won't stop people arguing to "keep 1.5 alive!" but it can't be done. We can, perhaps, accept that we'll exceed the target but hope to bring the temperature increase back down to 1.5. That's really not the same and any plan to do so will face the same problems that have beset the COP process.

Saving money on charging

Last year I moved house and this year I replaced my Nissan Leaf with a VW ID.3. A good choice, newer – even though second-hand – and 200% more range. But it needed a different home charger – one with a type 2 connector. I’d been using an untidy lash-up so now I needed a real home charger.

There are lots of home chargers. They charge at up to 7kW and promise lots of advantages such as access to money-saving dynamic tariffs. But they cost £300 to £700. And then there’s installation cost. One electrician quoted £1,150 to install a new consumer unit, mine has no spare circuits, run a thick cable on a safe and inconspicuous route, tricky in my house, and connect the charger. Would it be worth it?

Some chargers do give access to EV-friendly tariffs that allow you to charge at low rates. But I estimated that EV charging would only be 10% of my power use and the tariffs I looked at would charge more than my current rate on the other 90%. So the total cost would be higher. Bad idea.

Which just leaves charging speed. At 7kW I could charge the ID.3 from 20% to 80% in about 6 hours. That’s nice but I rarely need to charge it that much as I generally keep it charged above 40%. When I do I can usually put it on charge the previous afternoon. So If I start charging at 6 pm and plan to leave next morning at 8 am I’ll have 14 hours to charge it. That’s more than enough to charge it from 20% to 80% or, more likely, from 40% to 100%.

So I just didn’t need an expensive charger but I did need something tidy. I employed an electrician to install an external three-pin socket on a spur from an existing ring main. He did a good job and charged £276. I bought a charging cable, cost £106, which is permanently plugged in and attached to the wall. Also a plastic holder for the connector on the cable, £14. Total cost £401. Saving £750.

So far it’s been easy to use, has charged at 3kW and has had zero faults. Why pay more?

COP ends. Cop-out

 

Once again a climate COP has finished. Once again it finished in failure. This COP is worse than a failure - it is a betrayal.

It betrays the hopes of those who thought that its decisions would match the severity of the crisis. For this is the year in which the global temperature first exceeded the Paris climate target - 1.5 Celsius. That is just a fact. And it is nearly certain that most years will exceed the target in the coming decade.

And it betrays those whose lives, livelihoods and communities have already been damaged by the climate emergency - the inhabitants of low-lying islands, parched semi-deserts and flood ravaged valleys.

Worst of all it betrays our shared future. For we could have a world in which clean green energy makes us more secure and protects us against petrostate tyrants. A world in which natural energy and sound construction give us warm, comfortable homes. A world in which our lungs are safe from air pollution and our cities are not clogged with diesel and petrol cars.

Instead the fossil fuel lobbyists and petrostate politicians - the salesmen of human death and global collapse - will continue digging coal and pumping oil. To bribe governments and mislead publics. To make obscene profits from the worst thing that anyone could do - the destruction of our shared natural world and thus of our human future.

 

Once again global leaders have seen what's needed and resolved not to do it. Following Schiller we might say that "against stupidity even the gods contend in vain” However, world leaders are not too stupid to know the results of their actions. They are too cowardly to confront the vested interests. If there is a remedy for this its well above my pay grade.

5/11/24: A Very Bad Day

The news that Trump has won the vote and will become the next US president is bad for America. It's also bad for democracy, both there and everywhere else. It's bad for the rule of law, for women's rights, for civility in public discourse and for respect for facts. And its bad for the global climate. And for everyone who depends on it. Which is everyone.

The world climate is getting worse. The temperature increase will shortly exceed 1.5C and may reach 3C. But we're also at a point from which peak emissions may be in sight. GreenTech deployment in China and the misnamed (but who cares?) US Inflation Reduction Act are hopeful signs. We are not at peak. And the best that can happen now may not be enough to save us. But there is still hope.

Trump will undermine that hope. The measures in Project 2025 would stop government scientists from discussing the causes of climate change and government officials from even planning to mitigate that change. Or, appallingly, from planning emergency response to extreme weather events. Now we don't know whether Trump will do all that. He may do less. We do know that everything he does do will make effective climate action in the US much harder and will therefore make it harder everywhere. 

It's customary to end a post like this with optimism, however qualified. I can offer only two things. He can only be president for 4 years and he is not immortal.