In July of last year, I wrote a post comparing energy in Australia with energy in China, based on a claim made in a ABC Science article that “China is installing the wind and solar equivalent of five large nuclear power stations per week”.
According to the article, Australia could take lessons from China on how to rapidly decarbonize the power grid. but the comparison of the energy profile of both countries on the Our-World-in-Data website showed that reality was quite different than what the ABC Science article tried to convey. Whether one understand “decarbonizing” as cutting emissions or as decreasing the use of fossil fuels, it was Australia that always took the lead.
There was also another claim made in the article (my emphasis):
China accounts for about a third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. A recent drop in emissions (the first since relaxing COVID-19 restrictions), combined with the decarbonisation of the power grid, may mean the country’s emissions have peaked.
“With the power sector going green, emissions are set to plateau and then progressively fall towards 2030 and beyond,” CEF China energy policy analyst Xuyang Dong said.
Basically, there was a recent drop in (country) emissions back then and combined with the decarbonization efforts (of the power grid), an energy policy analyst felt strong enough to make the bold claim that the (country) emissions were set to plateau in 2024 and start declining thereafter.
I heard the “China’s-emissions-peaked!” claim multiple times before. It is real this time? When I wrote the article, I only had access to the 2023 emission data. Now I have emissions data for 2024, let’s have a look into it.
The Energy Profile of China (Our-World-in-Data) only has the emissions until 2023. Luckily, the most recent statistical Review of World Energy has data until 2024. This is the evolution of China emissions from 1990 until 2024:
No sign of a plateau yet. Emissions increased by 177 million tonnes compared to 2023. That emission drop was only temporary (as expected).
But then, wasn’t there that rapid decarbonization of the power grid that was praised in the ABC article? Sure, When solely looking at the share of electricity production by source, then things seems to go in the right direction.
Coal went from a maximum of 80.96% in 2007 to 58.18% in 2024, oil went from 13.8% in 1985 until 0.76% in 2024 and gas stays rather stable at around 3% in the last decade. So, yes, the share of fossil fuels in the electricity production of China is definitely decreasing.
However, when looking at the absolute numbers of electricity production by source, then one can spot the other side of the story:
Electricity production is increasing from 9,456 TWh in 2023 to 10,072 TWh in 2024, so while it is true that the share of fossil fuels is decreasing, the absolute amount of electricity production by fossil fuels is also increasing. It shows that it is misleading to focus solely on the decreasing share of fossil fuels without looking at the evolution of the production. More actual production by fossil fuels means more emissions, despite a decreasing share of fossil fuels in that production.
This is however just electricity production and electricity is only 20% of primary energy consumption. Unfortunately, Our-Word-in-Data only has the graph of primary energy comsumption until 2023:
2024 however will not be that different, only higher (the BP Statistical Review 2025 data shows a 4.1% increase in 2024), leading to the increase in China’s emissions in 2024.
In the end, the often announced China emission peak (again) didn’t materialize. The decreasing share of fossil fuels in China’s electricity production didn’t lead to decreasing country emissions. Hec, due to the increasing electricity production in 2024, it didn’t even lead to decreasing grid emissions.
via Trust, yet verify
June 30, 2025 at 04:18PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 