One Month Down: Reading China's March 2024 Emissions Fall Without Overreaching
On 28 May 2024 Carbon Brief published an analysis by Lauri Myllyvirta of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air showing that China's carbon dioxide emissions fell by 3 per cent year on year in March 2024. It was the first monthly decline since China lifted its zero-Covid controls in December 2022, and it ended a fourteen-month run of growth. The analysis argued that China's emissions could have peaked in 2023. A single month is thin evidence for a structural turning point in the world's largest emitter.
Power sector emissions rose by only 1 per cent year on year in March, even though electricity demand kept climbing, partly because households bought more air conditioners. Myllyvirta's analysis is explicit that the first quarter as a whole still showed higher emissions, because January and February 2024 were being compared with the subdued months immediately after reopening. The analysis notes that almost 300 GW of solar and wind capacity was connected in 2023, and that the pace accelerated further in the first quarter of 2024, with additions up 40 per cent on the year before.
The simple arithmetic is that China's power demand growth, which has been running at several per cent a year, now has a clean generation pipeline large enough to cover it. The analysis also points out that industry associations such as the China Photovoltaic Industry Association expect solar and wind additions to 2030 to exceed official targets by between 1,400 and 1,800 GW. The construction slump is doing a substantial share of the work in the current numbers.
There is a policy dimension that the March figure does not resolve. Signals against would be a sharp rebound in construction, a dry summer that forces coal plants to make up for lost hydro, or a slowdown in installations as grid connection queues lengthen. China's March emissions fall is real and its causes are partly structural. The fair conclusion is that China's emissions may have peaked in 2023, and that the probability rises with every month in which renewables meet demand growth.