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China is accelerating the large-scale development of renewable energy, and the growth of carbon emissions may have almost stagnated. The following five charts illustrate how China reached this milestone and what challenges lie ahead.
China is the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2), but it recently reached a major milestone: In the first half of 2026, more than half of its electricity came from non-coal-fired generation for the first time.
Twenty years ago, these black, polluting ores were the backbone of China's economy. At that time, China was undergoing rapid modernization, and coal-fired power generation accounted for 80% of the country's total power generation.
However, while China's overall electricity demand has since increased, solar and wind power generation have continued to grow, gradually reducing China's reliance on coal-fired power generation.
This major change brings an important signal to China and the world’s efforts to achieve net-zero emissions. According to one assessment, China's carbon dioxide emissions have almost stopped growing in recent years. Another analysis even suggested that China's emissions may have peaked in 2025, five years earlier than the Chinese government's original target.
From large-scale solar farms to electric trucks, the following five charts explain why China’s emissions growth has slowed significantly, how it reached this milestone, and what challenges remain on the road to fully achieving its 2060 net-zero emissions target.
Emissions curve starts to turn
image copyrightClimate Action Tracker/BBC
China's economy has experienced phenomenal growth over the past three decades. Carbon dioxide emissions have also risen sharply in parallel, increasing nearly fivefold from 1990 to 2024.
During the same period, China's share of global carbon dioxide emissions also increased from about 10% to more than 30%, making it the country with the largest increase in the world.
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Yu Aiqun, a research analyst at the US non-profit organization Global Energy Monitor (GEM), said that China plays a "pivotal role" in the global response to climate change, not only because it is the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, but also because its emissions are growing at the fastest rate.
"Once China's carbon emissions peak, global carbon emissions are likely to peak as well," she said.
Some people believe that China has reached this turning point. According to data from the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), a cooperative project to assess the climate actions of governments around the world, China's carbon emissions reached their highest level in 2024 and fell back in 2025. CAT predicts that by 2035, China’s carbon emissions will decrease by approximately 18%.
Another analysis by the Finnish think tank Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) found that, except for a slight increase in early 2026, China's carbon dioxide emissions have been flat or declining since March 2024.
China has seen similar trends in the past, such as when the government cut steel production and coal-fired power generation between 2014 and 2016, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown measures halted manufacturing and transportation activities.
But Belinda Schäpe, head of CREA's China team, pointed out that the situation this time is fundamentally different. The rapid decline in emissions is not only due to shrinking output in some heavy industries, but also due to China's "significant expansion" of clean energy and the increasing number of machines, vehicles and equipment switching to electricity instead of fossil fuels as energy source.
Lauri Myllyvirta, chief analyst at CREA, said it is currently difficult to determine whether China has achieved its goal of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030. Beijing's current policy statement is "vague".
"The government has not defined what peak emissions means - whether emissions remain stable or whether they peak first and then start to decline; nor does it explain how to verify this."
The Chinese government has not yet confirmed whether carbon dioxide emissions have peaked, and the most recent emission data released by the government is still for 2021.
However, Yu Aiqun believes that what is more important is whether China's emissions will decline rapidly after reaching the peak, or continue to remain at a high level. She said that even a 1% reduction in emissions would have a profound impact on global climate action.
Renewable energy revolution
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Driven by the strong policies of the Chinese government, large-scale wind and solar power stations have been built in the desert, and vast arrays of solar panels have been laid on rooftops; giant wind turbines harness the strong wind power along China's coast to generate electricity.
In 2023 alone, China added 217 gigawatts (GW) of solar installation capacity, exceeding the total installed capacity in the United States' history. China will reach this size again in 2024 and 2025.
Norah Zhang, a climate policy analyst at the NewClimate Institute, a German non-profit organization, said that China's large-scale development of renewable energy means that even if the country needs to produce more electricity every year to meet the needs of air conditioning, electric vehicles and data centers, it does not have to rely on fossil fuels again.
She said that China's renewable energy installation capacity is growing very fast, and the new wind and solar power generation capacity each year is enough to meet the country's additional electricity demand, creating conditions for China to gradually "exclude coal-fired power generation from the power system."
In July 2026, China's solar installation capacity even exceeded the capacity of coal-fired power generation installations for the first time. It’s worth noting, however, that coal-fired power generation is still much higher than solar power generation because solar installations typically produce less electricity per gigawatt of capacity.
As renewable energy power generation surges, China has difficulty storing or making good use of excess solar and wind energy. When the power grid reaches its load limit, some power cannot be transmitted and used. CREA data shows that in the first half of 2026, about 360 terawatt hours (TWh) of wind and solar power were abandoned in China, which is enough to supply the UK for a year.
Xie Pei pointed out that the challenge China currently faces is to ensure that the power system can effectively utilize the increasing capacity of renewable energy installations. China needs to reform its power market, introduce incentives and update its power infrastructure, she said.
Coal-fired power generation problem
image copyrightClimate Action Tracker/ Ember/ BBC
The proportion of coal-fired power generation in China's total power generation continues to decline rapidly. Data from China's National Energy Administration shows that coal-fired power generation accounted for approximately 54% of the country's power generation in 2025; from January to June 2026, the proportion further dropped to 49.7%, a record low.
Yao Zhe, global policy advisor of Greenpeace East Asia, said that this decline proves that the use of renewable energy is not only technically feasible, but also cost-competitive.
Wind and solar combined accounted for 25% of China's total power generation in the first half of this year, according to Chinese government data. Greenpeace predicts that this proportion will rise to 33% by 2028 and 40% by 2030. The Chinese government's goal is relatively conservative, hoping that wind and solar energy will account for 30% of total power generation by 2030.
But researchers warn that China still has a long way to go before weaning its reliance on coal.
Xie Pei emphasized that the decline in the proportion of coal-fired power generation does not mean that the coal-fired power generation itself is also declining. A joint assessment by CREA and GEM shows that in the first half of 2026, China's coal-fired power generation increased by 3.4% compared with the same period last year.
"Coal-fired power generation remains strong," Xie Pei said.
China's coal-fired power generation facilities are also expanding rapidly. A total of 30 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired generating units came online in the first half of this year, the most since 2016. There are another 274 GW of coal-fired power generation projects waiting to be constructed. If all are completed, the capacity of China's existing coal-fired power generation installations will increase by more than 20%.
Yu Aiqun said that China regards coal-fired power generation as a safety net for energy transformation and an important cornerstone of energy security and economic growth. But she said continued expansion of coal-fired power generation could damage China's reputation as a global leader in renewable energy.
Xie Pei said China's emissions have been able to remain stable in part because emissions from the steel and cement industries have fallen, which is linked to the troubles in China's huge real estate sector.
But she added that one of the main drivers of the drop in emissions was a drop in oil consumption in the transport sector following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the rapid electrification of the sector.
The rise of electric vehicles
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In terms of the popularity of electric vehicles, China has lagged far behind other countries in the world, and its emission reduction effects are also beginning to emerge.
CREA data shows that from January to June 2026, China's electric private cars, buses and trucks reduced oil consumption by a total of 36 million tons, equivalent to half of the UK's annual oil consumption.
In July this year, more than six of every ten new cars sold in China were "new energy vehicles." This is an umbrella term used by the Chinese government to cover pure electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids, and fuel cell vehicles that use alternative fuels such as hydrogen.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that China's electric vehicle sales will reach 14.3 million units in 2026, nearly three times that of Europe and 12 times that of the United States.
Over the past 15 years, buses, private cars and electric scooters have driven the electrification of China's road transportation. Today, trucks are taking over. Sales of electric trucks in China have grown exponentially over the past two years, with more than 400,000 units sold in 2025 alone.
Mao Shiyue, a researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a non-profit organization based in Washington, said that this amazing growth is largely driven by the surge in sales of electric heavy-duty trucks.
The Chinese government requires companies in dozens of industries to use a certain proportion of electric heavy trucks in their transportation fleets, otherwise they may face restrictions on production cuts on days with heavy pollution.
As the number of electric vehicles in China increases rapidly, the pressure on the power grid is also increasing. The grid needs to balance power supply and demand on an instantaneous basis.
Mao Shiyue said: "If a large number of electric vehicles charge their batteries at the same time, especially if they use fast charging mode, it may pose a challenge to the stability of the power grid."
battery craze
image copyrightChina Energy Storage Alliance /Ember/ BBC
Batteries are critical to China's goal of net-zero emissions: they not only power electric vehicles but also store excess electricity for later use.
By the end of 2025, China ranks first in the world in battery energy storage systems, accounting for more than half of the world's total installation capacity. These systems receive and store excess renewable electricity and transmit it back to the grid during times of highest demand.
Yang Biqing, an analyst at the think tank Ember, said, "These systems are an important part of the future grid, because the grid will increasingly rely on wind and solar power." For example, the system can store solar power generated during the day and send it back to the grid at night.
In the past few years, China has required wind and solar power stations to build or purchase a certain amount of energy storage facilities to help the grid absorb the power they generate. This policy, coupled with falling lithium battery prices, has driven the rapid transformation of the energy storage industry.
Ember data shows that as of the end of March 2026, China has installed nearly 150 gigawatts of lithium battery energy storage device capacity, more than the rest of the world combined. China aims to add more than 180 gigawatts of energy storage capacity by 2027, mainly using battery technology.
However, Ember pointed out that the current utilization rate of energy storage facilities in China is still seriously low.
Yang Biqing said that to increase the utilization rate of these facilities and further enhance their profitability, China needs to make more fundamental reforms to the power grid and power trading system, because the current system was originally designed for coal-fired power generation.
China's large-scale investment in clean energy and electric vehicles has begun to bear fruit, fundamentally changing China's power structure and changing the trend of carbon emissions.
But for many, a key question remains: If China's stagnant economy begins to recover, will emissions rebound again?
As Yu Aiqun said, coal is still deeply embedded in all aspects of the Chinese economy. How to decouple economic growth from coal is the "biggest challenge" facing this big country in achieving its net-zero emissions goal.
This article was originally written in English. We used artificial intelligence to assist in translation and was reviewed by BBC journalists before publication. Learn more about how we use artificial intelligence.
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