E360 DIGEST
MARCH 2, 2026
China’s Fossil Fuel Emissions Dropped Last Year as Solar Boomed
In China, the world’s leading carbon emitter, a massive buildout of solar power is beginning to push coal into decline. Last year China saw its fossil fuel emissions drop, even as demand for energy rose.
Emissions from energy and industry dropped by 0.3 percent in 2025, while consumption of energy rose by 3.5 percent, according to official statistics. Last year, renewables supplied 40 percent of power in China, up from 37 percent the previous year, with solar accounting for most of the growth. The added renewable power more than met the uptick in demand, and as a result, coal power fell slightly.
Breaking: China's official statistics report a 0.3% drop in CO2 emissions from energy&industry in 2025, the third time that annual emissions have fallen this century and the first fall predominantly driven by clean energy growth. 🧵
— Lauri Myllyvirta (@laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social) 2026-02-28T06:07:18.899Z
“This is an encouraging signal, as it suggests that the sort of large-scale energy transition which China has been investing heavily in has begun to translate into measurable outcomes,”
said Duo Chan, a climate scientist at the University of Southampton. “Whilst one year of lower emissions does not mean that the climate challenge is solved, the scale of China’s deployment of renewables can lead us to hope that this may be the start of a sustained decline in its emissions.”
Analysts believe that China is planning for further declines in coal power. As renewables ramp up, it has begun
retrofitting its fleet of coal plants to serve as a complement to wind and solar, rather than as a source of baseload power. Increasingly, coal generators will act as “peaker” plants, meeting spikes in power demand or gaps in the supply of wind and solar.
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