The News
A growing number of experts believe China’s carbon dioxide emissions have peaked, or will do so in 2025, in the latest sign of the country’s booming renewable energy production.
Although China is responsible for 90% of the growth in emissions since 2015, it has added green energy capacity at an unprecedented rate: The country is on track to add 180 and 159 gigawatts of solar and wind power respectively, roughly twice as much as the rest of the world combined, according to new data by the Global Energy Monitor.
SIGNALS
Unclear whether the transition from coal will be fast enough
China’s investment in renewable energy has been rapid, but it still has a significant way to go in reducing coal consumption if it is to meet its carbon neutrality target by 2060, one Manila-based activist told The Guardian. Coal currently accounts for almost 80% of China’s fossil fuel emissions. After major power blackouts in 2021 and 2022, Beijing is reluctant to totally phase out coal, the outlet said. Instead, it unveiled a renewable-energy-substitution program in October, which plans to reduce coal consumption in a “safe” and “orderly” manner, the South China Morning Post reported. The country is conservative when it comes to renewables targets, The Guardian noted, with a policy of “if you can’t do it, don’t say it.”
US tariffs on Chinese exports threaten global green transition
The “America First” policy trumpeted by US President-elect Donald Trump could undermine the world’s efforts to reduce emissions, argued Harvard economist Jeffery Frankl. New Western tariffs on low-cost Chinese clean tech could derail decades of progress by forcing “consumers to bear the costs of the green transition,” he said. “It’s foolhardy to believe that US businesses can easily step in and crank out these essential goods in relative global isolation,” MIT Technology Review wrote. “Collaboration and competition, not hostility, are how we can catch up to the world’s largest supplier of clean technology products.”