See how China finally slowed its ballooning emissions right down

The growth of China's emissions may have virtually stopped as it races ahead with its rapid rollout of renewables. Five charts show how it reached this milestone and what lies ahead.

China – the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2) – has reached a major milestone: in the first half of 2026, less than half of the country's electricity was generated by coal for the first time in its history.

Twenty years ago, these dirty black rocks were the pillar of China's economy: coal power accounted for 80% of all the electricity the country gobbled as it undertook rapid modernisation.

But while the country's overall electricity demand has expanded since then, growing solar and wind power are increasingly lessening its reliance on coal power.

The result of this substantial shift is a potent signal for the country's – and the world's – effort to reach net zero: the growth of China's CO2 emissions has virtually stopped in recent years, according to one assessment. China's emissions may even have peaked in 2025, according to another analysis – five years ahead of the country's own deadline.

From solar megafarms to electric trucks, here are five charts which tell the story behind China's great emissions slowdown, how it reached this milestone and what lies ahead as it races to reach its target of net zero by 2060.

China's economy has seen monumental growth over the past three decades. So have its CO2 emissions, which ballooned nearly fivefold from 1990 to 2024.

China's global share of CO2 also jumped from around 10% to more than 30% during this period, the largest global increase.

China plays a "pivotal role" in the world's fight against climate change not only because it is the largest CO2 emitter, but also because its emissions have grown at the fastest rate, says Yu Aiqun, a research analyst at Global Energy Monitor (GEM), a non-profit in the US.

"Once China's carbon emissions peak, global carbon emissions will likely peak, too," she says.

Some believe the watershed moment is already upon China. The country's carbon emissions reached their highest level in 2024 and fell in 2025, according to data from Climate Action Tracker (CAT), a collaborative project that assesses governments' climate actions. CAT predicts China's carbon emissions will decrease by about 18% by 2035.

A separate analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a Finnish think tank, found that China's CO2 emissions have remained flat or falling since March 2024, bar a small rise in early 2026.

Similar trends have happened before, for example when China's government downsized steelmaking and coal power between 2014 and 2016, and during Covid-19, when lockdowns paused manufacturing and transport activity.

But this time there is a fundamental difference, says Belinda Schäpe, CREA's China team lead. The rapid decline is not only driven by the shrinking output of some heavy industries, but also by China's "enormous expansion" of clean energy and growing use of electricity – instead of fossil fuels – to power machines, vehicles and devices.

It is hard to say with certainty whether China has already achieved its goal to peak CO2 emissions by 2030. Beijing's existing policy language is "ambiguous", says Lauri Myllyvirta, CREA's lead analyst. "The government has not defined what it means for emissions to have peaked – whether it refers to emissions stabilising or peaking then declining – and how this would be verified."

China has yet to confirm whether its CO2 emissions have peaked, with the most recent emissions data released by the government for 2021.

What is more important, however, is whether China's emissions will drop quickly after the peak or remain at a high level, Yu says. Even a 1% reduction would have a profound impact on global climate action, she says.

Under China's strong policy steer, massive wind and solar power stations have risen in the desert and vast arrays of solar panels have been mounted on rooftops. Gigantic wind turbines are harnessing the power of strong storms off the coast of China.

In 2023 alone, China installed 217 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels, more than the US had installed in its entire history. It repeated this feat in 2024 and 2025.

A renewable spree has prevented China from falling back onto fossil fuels, even though it needs to generate more and more electricity each year – for air-conditioning, EVs and data centres – says Norah Zhang, a climate-policy analyst at NewClimate Institute, a non-profit in Germany.

The country's renewable capacity has grown at such a fast rate that wind and solar power were more than enough to cover the country's extra electricity demand each year, paving the way for the country to "squeeze coal out of its power system", she says.

In July 2026, the installed capacity of solar in China even overtook coal for the first time (although it's worth noting that coal still generates far more electricity than solar, since solar typically generates less electricity per GW of capacity).

As its renewable power has surged, China has struggled to store or make use of the excess solar and wind energy it generates as grids reach their limits. In the first six months of 2026, around 360 terawatt-hours (TWh) of wind and solar power – enough to power the UK for a year – was curtailed in China, according to CREA.

China's challenge is now ensuring the power system can effectively use its expanding renewables capacity, Schäpe says. The country needs to reform its power market, roll out incentives and update its power infrastructure, she says.

The share of China's electricity generated by coal has continued to shrink rapidly. By 2025, coal generated around 54% of its electricity and this further dipped to a historic low of 49.7% between January and June of 2026, according to China's National Energy Administration.

This fall proves that adopting renewable energy is not only technically feasible but also cost-competitive, says Yao Zhe, a global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia.

Wind and solar power made up 25% of China's power generation in the first half of the year, according to government data. Greenpeace projects this will rise to 33% by 2028 and 40% by 2030. China's target is more conservative: it aims to generate 30% of its electricity using wind and solar by 2030.

But researchers warn China still has a long way to go to kick its coal habit. For one, a falling share of coal power is not the same as a falling amount of coal power, Schäpe stresses. China generated 3.4% more coal power in the first half of 2026, compared to the same period last year, according to a joint assessment by CREA and GEM. "Coal power generation remains strong," Schäpe says.

China's coal-powered fleet is also growing fast. In the first six months of this year, 30 gigawatts (GW) of new plants went into operation, the largest amount since 2016. Another 274GW is waiting to be built, which could expand the country's current coal-powered fleet by more than 20%.

China views coal power as a safety net for its energy transition and a cornerstone of energy security and economic growth, Yu says. But its continuous expansion could damage the country's reputation as a global renewable leader, she says.

Nevertheless, China's emissions have been able to hold stable partly due to falling emissions of the steel and cement industries driven by the collapse of the country's vast real-estate industry, Schäpe says.

One of the main drivers of emissions' reductions, though, Schäpe adds, is the decline in oil consumption in transport following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the rapid electrification of this sector.

China has left the world in the dust when it comes to the adoption of EVs and the impact on emissions is already starting to show. Between January and June 2026, China's fleet of electric cars, buses and trucks helped avoid the use of 36 million tonnes of oil, according to CREA – equivalent to half the UK's annual oil consumption.

In July, more than six in every 10 new cars sold in China were "new-energy vehicles", a term used by the Chinese government to include pure electric, plug-in hybrids and fuel cell vehicles powered by alternative fuels like hydrogen. EV sales in China are expected to reach 14.3 million in 2026, nearly three times more than in Europe and 12 times higher than in the US, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Buses, cars and scooters have led the EV deployment on Chinese roads over the past 15 years. Now, trucks have taken over the baton. The sales of electric trucks have grown exponentially in China over the past two years, with more than 400,000 sold in 2025 alone. 

This extraordinary growth has been largely driven by the surge of electric heavy-duty trucks, says Mao Shiyue, a researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a non-profit with headquarters in Washington DC. The government requires companies in dozens of industries to use a certain share of these trucks in transport fleets, or face production curtailments on heavily polluted days.

As China's EV fleet balloons, so does the pressure facing its power grid, which needs to balance electricity supply with demand in real time. "If a large number of EVs charge their batteries at the same time, especially using rapid-charging modes, that could challenge the grid's stability," Mao says.

Batteries are crucial for China's net-zero ambition: they power its fleet of EVs and store surplus electricity for later use.

China is the world leader in battery energy storage systems, accounting for more than half of the global capacity by the end of 2025. These systems receive and store surplus renewable power, sending it back to the grid during periods of maximum energy demand.

"They are a key component for a future grid that uses a higher and higher portion of wind and solar power," says Yang Biqing, an analyst at Ember, such as by storing daytime solar power and releasing it to the grid in the evening.

For the past few years, China has required wind and solar stations to build or purchase a certain amount of energy-storage capacity to help the grid absorb the electricity they generate. This policy, coupled with the falling price of lithium batteries, has kickstarted a remarkable transition.

By the end of March 2026, China had installed nearly 150GW of energy-storage capacity that used lithium batteries, more than the rest of the world combined, according to Ember. China aims to build more than 180GW of new energy-storage capacity, primarily those using batteries, by 2027.

Still, China's energy-storage stations are currently severely underused, according to Ember.

Boosting their usage – and by extension their profitability – will require more fundamental changes to China's power grid and power-trading system, which were designed to serve coal, Yang says.

China's heavy investment in clean energy and EVs has begun to bear fruit, changing its power structure and bending its carbon emissions' trajectory in fundamental ways.

But for many, a key question remains: will China's emissions rebound once more if its stagnant economy starts to pick up? As Yu says, coal is deeply embedded in all aspects of China's economy – decoupling the two is "the biggest challenge" the superpower faces in its bid to reach net zero.

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