China Is No Climate Savior

Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump has pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, paused wind farm leasing on U.S. public lands and offshore waters, and defiantly declared that “we will drill, baby, drill” for oil and gas to achieve energy dominance. In response, climate policy advocates have wasted no time in proclaiming China to be the world’s last best hope for climate action.

“Insofar as there is to be a global climate leader it can now only be China,” wrote economist Adam Tooze. A Chinese climate policy analyst speculated in a Straits Times interview whether this moment might mark structural Western decline in the “climate space” and the rise of “alternative voices.” Bloomberg journalists contrasted Trump’s return against China’s record-breaking solar and wind build-outs, arguing that China could be poised to upstage the United States by assuming global climate leadership. Recent newsletters from Carbon Brief overflow with positive headlines about China’s energy transition efforts while reporting grimly on the Trump-led shift on climate policy.

While the United States now makes for an even more convenient climate pariah than usual, framing Washington as the villain and Beijing as the climate savior ignores the facts of China’s energy use and trajectory. More importantly, selectively framing the debate this way also deflects attention from Beijing’s own emissions, particularly in the coal power and industrial sectors.

As the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement fundamentally challenges the usefulness of climate summits and pledges, praise for China’s alleged climate progress validates charges that the climate policy circuit exists only for performative promises and symbolic pageantry.

There is a stark dichotomy between applause for Beijing’s climate rhetoric and the reality of China’s emissions trajectory. Since China signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, it has accounted for 90 percent of all global growth in carbon emissions. China now produces more than 30 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. China’s greenhouse gas emissions are more than twice the United States’ and more than four times India’s or the European Union’s.

Five years have passed since Chinese President Xi Jinping’s landmark pledge to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2060, but there is little evidence to suggest that the country’s energy system and policies are moving in the right direction. China will very likely miss its 2025 carbon-intensity pledge—an 18 percent reduction in carbon emissions per unit of economic output compared to 2020 levels—along with all of its other 2025 pledges related to limiting coal use and expanding clean power. And far from making good on a widely celebrated 2021 promise to phase out international financing of coal projects, China remains, by far, the leading financier of overseas coal power capacity. At home, Chinese planners started construction of 94.5 gigawatts of coal power generation in 2024 alone, roughly equal to the power generated by the entire U.S. nuclear power sector.

China’s emissions trajectory illustrates the limitations of the most venerated global climate pledge of all: limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (or about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by the end of the century. Even if China’s carbon emissions peaked this year and then plummeted linearly to zero by 2060, China alone would consume the entire world’s remaining carbon budget for a 66 percent chance of achieving the 1.5 degree goal.

Commentators and activists demanding muscular climate policies from the West usually look away when others point an accusatory finger at China. But a Chinese climate analyst writing in the Financial Times effectively conceded that an emissions pathway that avoids breaching the 1.5 degree Celsius target would require an unlikely “crash decarbonization” by China.

Planners and thinkers need to accept that the 1.5 degree goal is now irreconcilable with reality—no matter how much they imagine that Chinese technological and construction magic might save the day.

Some might counter that while the 1.5 degree target may have slipped away, Beijing nonetheless has a real chance of executing an about-face and leading the world in fast-paced decarbonization. Certainly, China is building solar, wind, battery, and nuclear energy facilities at a blinding pace, installing nearly 100 gigawatts more solar capacity in the first half of 2024 than the rest of the world combined. More than 80 percent of the world’s solar cell manufacturing takes place in Chinese factories. This year, sales of electric vehicles in the country will likely exceed those of combustion-engine cars. And Beijing can build on these successes by helping other countries, particularly low- and middle-income states, develop renewable power projects. Indeed, Chinese solar exports are on the rise.

But none of these numbers can change the bigger picture. Since 2011, China has consistently consumed more coal than the rest of the world combined; last year, coal use likely hit another record high. China’s clean electricity additions may be impressive, but they are only now beginning to match growth in overall energy demand, which means that fossil fuel energy consumption is—at best—only plateauing, without any of it yet being displaced. Meanwhile, an uptick in curtailed and otherwise wasted renewable generation suggests that a further build-out of renewables is increasingly constrained by grid infrastructure and market inflexibility.

China’s vast industrial sector—often glossed over in climate discussions—accounts for around 60 percent to 70 percent of the country’s emissions. Industry currently depends on fossil fuels to smelt ores, fire up furnaces, and serve as the feedstock from which various products are made. The Chinese aluminum sector alone produces roughly as much carbon dioxide as the entire country of Indonesia. China’s chemical, steel, metal, and minerals industries together exceed the total emissions of the entire United States. Next to such figures, the strident demands by various activists and advocacy groups for climate commitments from sub-Saharan African nations with negligible emissions appear even more absurd.

Some of China’s policies, including its lack of ambition to electrify heavy industry, actually hold back global decarbonization efforts. Cleaner means of producing steel, nickel, graphite, or ubiquitous chemicals such as calcium carbide and sodium hydroxide face fierce competition from highly polluting but low-cost Chinese producers that enjoy generous government support.

China has proposed and imposed export controls on key technologies required to manufacture solar panels, batteries, and other clean technology. Beijing may be keen to sell electric cars and solar equipment at home and abroad, but it is clearly not giving these technologies to the world.

If anything, the Chinese example does not buoy hopes that a developing country can both build a heavy industrial base and mitigate emissions. Meanwhile, activists and international policymakers have expressed concern over the entanglement of China’s solar, battery, and electric car industries with state-sponsored forced labor programs in the province of Xinjiang. Such objectionable policies have now forced many governments and firms into difficult quandaries over the ethical sourcing of solar panels and other clean technology.

And far from making good on the 2021 promise to phase out international financing of coal projects, state-owned banks and financial institutions such as the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China continue to play a central role in funding coal-fired projects. Through its Belt and Road Initiative, China has extended its financial influence globally by providing loans and investments specifically earmarked for energy infrastructure, including coal. These investments often come with attractive financing terms that make them appealing to governments with limited access to capital. China’s stated climate ambitions thus stand in sharp contrast to its overseas financing of coal plants.

To this day, China has duly ratified global climate treaties, consistently attended climate summits, and contributed some funds to global climate finance mechanisms. But when it comes to the key metric of emissions, U.S. and EU numbers are decreasing, while China’s have not yet peaked. Distaste for Trump’s climate policies must not mislead commentators into mistaking Chinese decarbonization dreams for real-world deeds.

A more serious debate about the global energy transition must grapple with what Beijing is still not doing instead of just cheering at China’s solar and electric car milestones. Climate commentary about the country must grow beyond getting excited when a communique of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee mentions the words “carbon reduction” for the first time.

And rather than asking softball questions about whether Beijing remains committed to climate action despite Trump’s uncooperativeness, perhaps commentators should repeatedly ask when the government will cease its efforts to subsidize heavy industry in the most carbon-intensive manner imaginable. They should question whether China messages its climate progress as a means to influence U.S. and European behavior, or if Beijing has instead received concessions from Washington or Brussels by offering unenforceable climate promises.

Most of all, the climate policy circuit must open its eyes to the reality that Chinese policymakers follow a “China First” geopolitical strategy that is at least as relentless as Trump’s “America First” posture. Official spokespeople insist that China is still a developing country with a lower obligation to cut emissions or contribute toward climate finance, while Chinese climate negotiators’ stress that climate cooperation is conditional on efforts to improve relations in other areas to Beijing’s satisfaction—a policy linkage that is entirely at odds with the widespread Western view of climate as a challenge above all others.

And if climate activists still doubt that Beijing’s real intentions diverge from its cooperative rhetoric, they need look no further than Russian troops riding across Ukraine in Chinese-made Desertcross all-terrain vehicles, supported by Chinese drones, and funded by Chinese purchases of Russian oil and gas.

Behind all the promises and signaling, the numbers don’t lie: China is not going to drive a rapid transition away from fossil fuels at home or abroad. It may well be the case that what is happening in China is simply what is happening everywhere else: slow, long-term decarbonization. In other words, China will be using fossil fuels for a long time, even as it makes progress on clean energy and low carbon technology.

If climate advocates are now giving up hope that Trump’s United States might supply their Hollywood climate ending, then they will find little solace in turning expectantly toward China.