The figure that changes the narrative
China, identified as the main contributor to annual carbon dioxide emissions over the past twenty years, arrives at Cop31 with an emissions decline exceeding expectations. According to data published last week by the Finnish think tank Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), in the third quarter of this year Chinese emissions fell by 3.1% year on year. This is the fastest decline since 2022, when health lockdowns had stalled the economy, but this time economic growth has shown a slight recovery.
The picture is made more significant by the fact that last year China released more than 12 billion tonnes of CO2, almost one third of the global total. The decrease, though slight relative to the total, therefore signals a reversal of trend in an industrial system of such size that it weighs on the global emissions accounts.
Electrification and renewables behind the decline
Belinda Schäpe, head of CREA's China group, notes that slowdowns in emissions had already occurred in the past, between 2014 and 2016 and during Covid. This time, however, the reduction in heavy industry activity is compounded by the expansion of clean energy and the replacement of fossil fuels with electricity. The structural point is that in the first half of the year the share of energy supplied by coal-fired power plants fell below 50% for the first time in history.
The change is supported by massive investments: since 2022 China has installed 1,000 gigawatts of solar capacity, more than the rest of the world combined, and over 300 GW of wind power, twice the total capacity of the United States. Hydropower and nuclear plants add to this. In the transport sector, electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids accounted in September for two thirds of passenger car sales, and half of heavy trucks sold on the domestic market were electric. Sinopec expects China's oil consumption to fall in 2026 for the third consecutive year, by almost 4%.
Temporary factors and signs of slowdown
The Economist, cited in the article, notes that some factors behind the decline will not last. A campaign to enforce safety rules in coal mines, launched after a May accident, drove up coal prices and reduced consumption. The war in Iran raised oil prices, and unusually mild weather lowered electricity demand. The collapse of the real estate market, which reduced demand for steel and cement, and the contraction in electric car sales, down for ten months after the withdrawal of most incentives, also weigh on the figures. In the first nine months of the year China installed less than half the solar capacity compared with the same period the previous year, and since June last year new solar parks have had to sell power at market prices.
In terms of pledges, China has declared a carbon neutrality target by 2060. Maintaining the decline would, however, require an acceleration, and the grid wastes part of the clean energy fed into it because it cannot store or transmit it. The country is building solar towers, long-distance power lines, tariffs linked to renewable fluctuations, and integration of artificial intelligence into grid management.
The European reading by the Kyoto Club
Francesco Ferrante, vice president of the Kyoto Club, reads the figure as a lesson for Europe. He argues that claiming it was useless to reduce European emissions as long as China continued to pollute was a strategic as well as environmental error, because Beijing was investing and gaining positions in clean technologies while Europe debated whether to slow the Green Deal. According to Ferrante, decarbonization is not a luxury for rich countries but an industrial and economic opportunity.
The thesis is supported by the electrification figures reported above, but it remains a partisan statement, not a verified fact. The material does not quantify the employment or industrial effects in Europe, nor is the Chinese trade surplus mentioned in the article linked analytically to clean technologies. It also remains to be verified whether the quarterly decline will be consolidated in future CREA data and whether the slowdown in solar installations and electric vehicle sales will continue.
