If there is such uncertainty around the date on which we cross this peak before falling again, it is because calculating the balance of emissions of each country and ensuring that minor fluctuations are not taken for major trends takes time. Under UN rules, rich countries must publish their emissions volumes every year. Poor countries, which originally only declared them every four years, must do so every two years since 2024.
After building their wealth and power through industrialization, rich democracies freed themselves from heavy industry and decoupled economic growth from their emissions. Most have been declining for a decade, if not more. Japan reached its peak in 2013; the United States in 2007; Germany in 1990 and Great Britain in 1973.
Emissions from poor countries, on the other hand, have continued to increase as their economic results have progressed, and they are reluctant to slow down one or the other. China does not intend to make any commitments before 2030; Brazil, India and Indonesia, among others, have not yet set a date for reducing their emissions.
But the link between emissions and development is gradually weakening as energy is used more efficiently and its production becomes cleaner. This is particularly true of China, which is both the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases – 30% of the global total – and the main driver of the expansion of renewable energy (it installs twice as much more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined).
China is required to report its emissions less often than Europe or the United States. And due to delays, has not published an update since December 2023, when the data it provided did not go beyond the year 2018.
This is why observers are frantically trying to assess the trajectory of Chinese emissions. They increased sharply in 2023 after the lifting of the draconian restrictions introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic. But they seem to have declined since: analyzes by the think tank Asia Society Policy Institute showed a drop of 3% in the twelve months preceding March 2024. Lauri Myllyvirta, member of the team of analysts who wrote the report , estimates that Chinese emissions could have peaked in 2023.
None of this is certain. Myllyvirta notes that greater than expected demand for fossil fuels from Chinese industries could reverse the downward trend. The new official report on Chinese emissions – handed over on December 31, 2024 – should clarify the situation, as will new assessments expected in 2025. But China's greenhouse gas emissions are so enormous that their peak alone would be able to modify the global trajectory .
That would be excellent news. But it wouldn't mean much. Any path to 1.5° (and many others that would lead to greater warming) would still require large additional reductions in emissions and an acceleration of the carbon removal process. Succeeding in crossing the peak of emissions would deserve to be applauded. But once emissions stop rising, the only question that will matter is how to bring them down quickly.
Par Rachel Dobbs, Environment editor, The Economist
