Is China going to single-handedly save the planet? Emissions may have peaked this year

Is China going to single handedly save the planet? Global emissions could start to fall this year for the first time since the industrial revolution, according to new research, largely thanks to China’s efforts as the global green energy champion, reports ABC News Australia.

Nevertheless, the new results suggesting emissions have peaked still leave the climate on course to warm by 2.6C above the pre-industrial base line by 2030 and missing the Paris Agreement target of 1.5C unless more urgent reductions in emissions are made. While countries like China, India and the EU are rapidly rolling out new renewable energy generation capacity the burning of fossil fuels still accounts for about three quarters of emissions and has not been diminished.

Massive investment into green power means that two thirds of all solar panels working in the world today are in China. Although China also remains heavily dependent on coal to fuel its burgeoning economic growth and is by far the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs), renewables have already overtaken coal this year in its power mix and will likely overtake coal globally next year, according to the IEA. The UK, the birthplace of coal power, has just shut down its last coal-fired power plant.

"China installed more solar power in one year than the US has installed in its entire history. It's just a really insane rate of change at the moment," Neil Grant from Climate Analytics told ABC. "The pace of acceleration, particularly last year, did catch quite a lot of people by surprise and the signs are that China is on track to beat that again this year."

All in all, China is believed to be close to peak emissions, but now scientists say China’s progress is likely to reduce emissions for the whole world soon. The latest research by climate science publisher Carbon Brief shows China's CO2 emissions fell by 1 per cent in the second quarter of 2024, the first quarterly drop since the country re-opened from COVID-19, ABC reports. 

The tumbling cost of solar panels has facilitated the rapidity of the roll-out and the amount of investment being poured into the sector is accelerate, while falling prices give governments more bang for their buck. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said international investment in solar will grow to $500bn this year, higher than all other forms of energy generation combined. 

Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, long resistant to efforts to curb them, may finally be on the verge of a historic reversal, according to two major international agencies that now predict that emissions could begin a sustained decline by 2024, driven by the rapid rise of renewable energy and electric vehicles (EVs), with China taking the lead. Over half of the electric cars on the planet are driving around on Chinese roads and EVs are now cheaper than fuel-powered ones in China. 

According to Leonard Quong, head of Australian research at Bloomberg NEF, "It's really hard to wrap your head around how quickly and how big this change is." This shift is crucial, as emissions need to peak before 2025 to prevent the most dangerous levels of global warming, according to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

For decades, global carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise despite growing political and scientific consensus on the need for action. As bne IntelliNews reported, global emissions of the three most dangerous gases are currently at an all-time high. The annual Global Carbon Budget projects fossil CO₂  emissions of 36.8bn tonnes in 2023, up 1.1% from 2022. And methane in particular – 90 times more potent than CO₂ – is at an 800,000-year high.

Both Bloomberg NEF and climate think-tank Climate Analytics are now forecasting that 2023 was the peak and that 2024 may see a significant drop, due to China’s rapid roll-out of green technology and its skyrocketing EV use – half the cars on the road in China are now EVs.

“Although it's hard to say exactly when emissions have peaked, the data so far in 2024 seems that that was the right call,” Quong told ABC. Bloomberg NEF's research suggests that 2023 might go down as the year emissions began their decline, thanks to fundamental changes in the global energy system.

Last year the share of renewables in electricity production reached 30% of global electricity, reducing reliance on coal and gas, and this boom has been facilitated by the plunging cost of solar panel production in particular.

"For over three-quarters of the world's population, it's cheaper to build new wind and solar generation than any other form of carbon-intensive electricity," Quong noted, adding that, the Climate Crisis aside, the economics of green tech alone favour renewables. “The era of fossil fuels’ dominance is coming to an end,” the Bloomberg NEF report bluntly stated.

Senior climate and energy analyst at Climate Analytics Neil Grant cautions that the problem is not solved yet. Soaring electricity demand to power artificial intelligence could easily out pace capacity in the years to come, several US investment banks have recently warned. Accelerating temperature rises could also cause major economic dislocations; as bne IntelliNews reported, the climate models are wrong and temperatures are rising faster than even the worst-case scenarios predicted.

Bloomberg NEF worked out several different scenarios for what might happen if global emissions peak this year.

The economic transition scenario is similar to business-as-usual and assumes that the existing climate policies stay in place but aren't strengthened. Emissions will peak in 2023, but that is not enough to keep within the Paris Agreement targets. The trajectory after that is of a mild decline and the world will still warm by 2.6C.

To keep the net zero by 2050 target the emission reduction policies will still have to be far more aggressive than the current policies. Reaching peak emissions is very good news, if confirmed, but it is not sufficient in itself, and even with emissions falling in 2024 and beyond, the world will still be on course to miss the Paris targets, which will spell major changes to the climate and an ecological disaster.