At COP30 in Belém, Brazil, scientists delivered another stark update: global fossil-fuel emissions are set to rise yet again this year. But for the first time, there are credible signs the world may be nearing a turning point. The timing of that peak — and what happens afterward — will depend largely on one country: China.
According to new data released by the Global Carbon Project on 13 November, emissions from fossil-fuel burning and cement production are projected to rise by 1.1% in 2025, reaching 38.1 billion tonnes of CO₂. That represents yet another record high.
Overall greenhouse-gas emissions — which also include methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases — are still climbing. Yet scientists at COP30 stressed that emissions growth is slowing, and that a peak could emerge within the decade. As Bill Hare, physicist and head of Climate Analytics in Berlin, put it: “We don’t [project] the global inflection point until around 2030, unfortunately, but it does look like emissions are flattening off.”
Some researchers argue that the world may already be entering the early stages of decline for CO₂ specifically. The Global Carbon Project notes that overall carbon emissions could fall slightly in 2025 if a projected drop in deforestation and other land-use changes holds. But researchers caution that it is still “too early to say that the world has turned a corner on its fossil-fuel addiction.”
Emissions today are roughly 10% higher than when the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 — far from where they need to be to limit warming to 1.5°C. Major industrialized countries, responsible for the bulk of historical emissions, have been reducing their emissions for more than two decades. But emissions are rising nearly everywhere else, especially across low- and middle-income countries that are growing their economies and expanding energy access.
China is the deciding factor
No country shapes the global emissions trajectory more than China. Over the past two decades, China has become the world’s largest emitter and now accounts for almost one-third of global greenhouse gases. The main driver is coal: China burned nearly 2.3 billion tonnes of it last year, according to the International Energy Agency in a Nature recap.
Yet China, conversely, is also the world leader in clean-energy deployment — wind, solar, and electric vehicles — and has committed to reducing overall greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 7% from peak levels by 2035. Hare predicts that when China’s emissions peak, global emissions will peak as well.
So are we in a good place?
A growing number of analysts believe that moment may have already arrived. Data from Carbon Monitor, which tracks daily emissions, suggests China’s carbon emissions peaked in 2024 and will fall by 1.2% this year. Researchers at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) report a similar downward trend.
According to Zhu Liu, an Earth-systems scientist at Tsinghua University, the biggest driver of the current decline is the collapse of China’s real-estate market, which has slashed demand for cement and steel. (See the problems of concrete and cement here) Clean-energy deployment is accelerating as well. China’s impact on other nations such as Ethiopia are also clear. Massive neighborhoods around Addis Ababa were built with cement and then abandoned. “I would say this is the peak of China’s carbon emissions,” Liu says.
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China isn’t known for its accuracy in anything, certainly not the news. To win global favor and expanding trade agreements in EVs for instance, China will need to learn to be a bit more like the west. Countries that have bought Chinese EVs, for instance, understand they are a security risk as the Communist party can collect data and information about the drivers and the roads with the flip of a switch.
Over the years, the concerns of China spying have led to a wave of proposed bans and new rules on devices such as DJI drones, with US lawmakers and agencies worried that they could send sensitive information to China or be used for spying. The biggest push to ban DJI comes from the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
