In the third annual edition of this report, CREA reassesses China’s progress towards the country’s climate commitments and emissions pathways aligned with the Paris Agreement goals. This year — in cooperation with the International Society for Energy Transition Studies (ISETS) — CREA surveyed a pool of 44 experts representing diverse specialisations in the fields of climate and energy.
Among the findings on the state of China’s emissions and renewables development:
- China’s CO₂ emissions for the full year are expected to be flat or record a small increase.
- Controlling for variations in hydropower availability, emissions are structurally stable but not yet falling. As a result, China will remain off track to its 2025 carbon intensity target after 2024.
- Growth in solar and wind power generation and, as a result, total non-fossil energy, accelerated further after their rapid capacity expansion in 2023.
- Electric vehicle sales continued impressive growth, exceeding 50% of all vehicle sales for three consecutive months in 2024. The growth in clean energy technologies is faster than in the transition pathways.
- Energy consumption growth continued to outpace GDP growth. Both energy consumption and electricity consumption growth are faster than in the transition pathways aligned with the Paris Agreement.
- China made progress in controlling investments in new fossil power generation and steelmaking capacity compared with 2023, and in reducing emissions from steel and transportation. Meanwhile, the increase in emissions from the coal-to-chemicals industry accelerated compared with 2023.
Over the past three years, expert views have steadily shifted towards optimism on China’s progress amid this robust clean energy growth. This year’s findings include:
- 52% of experts surveyed for the report expect China’s coal consumption to peak by 2025, while only 20% say the peak will take place later.
- In 2022, 69% of experts expected China’s emissions to peak more than 15% above their 2020 level; by 2024, this share was 44%.
- The proportion of experts who believe that China’s CO₂ emissions have already peaked or will peak by 2025 has increased significantly, rising from 15% in 2022 to 21% in 2023, and reaching 44% in 2024.
- The share of experts believing that China’s coal consumption has already peaked increased from 15% in 2023 to 36% in 2024.
- Expectations of the timing of the CO₂ peak in power, industry and transportation also all became more optimistic. However, while the majority of experts continue to think that China’s current economic situation is leading to an acceleration of the energy transition, the share of those who think the economic situation is going to slow down progress increased from 34% in 2023 to 43% in 2024.
CREA also found the following indicators to be still off track:
- Total CO₂ emissions, excluding the effect of weather variations
- Total energy consumption
- Industrial energy consumption
- Buildings energy consumption
- Coal consumption growth in the coal-to-chemicals sector accelerated, and the growth of the sector received new policy backing
- Emissions of non-CO₂ greenhouse gases still track annual reporting and targets that would enable systematic emission reductions and monitoring of progress
