China unveils new climate pledge with modest 7–10% emissions cut from peak levels by 2035
Announcement introduces absolute reduction target for the first time
Analysts say China’s renewable energy boom could far exceed stated goals
Lack of clarity on peak year and conservative targets spark criticism
World’s largest emitter seen as reluctant to claim climate leadership
China’s dominance in clean technology is enabling the global transition, yet its underwhelming climate pledge seems reluctant to acknowledge this.
The country unveiled its new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement in New York on September 24, 2025, following months of anticipation by observers. In April 2025, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China would submit a new NDC pegged to 2035, “covering all economic sectors and all greenhouse gases before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belem, Brazil”.
The announced set of targets encompasses the following:
Reduce economy-wide net greenhouse gas emissions by 7 per cent to 10 per cent from peak levels,
Increase the share of non-fossil fuels in total energy consumption to over 30 per cent,
Expand the installed capacity of wind and solar power to over six times the 2020 levels, striving to bring the total to 3,600 gigawatts,
Scale up the total forest-stock volume to over 24 billion cubic metres,
Make ‘new energy vehicles’ the mainstream in the sales of new vehicles;
Expand the national carbon emissions trading market to cover major high-emission sectors.
This extends some of the previous targets while adding new ones as well.
China’s announcement of an absolute emissions reduction target is a first for the country, given that it had previously focused on intensity targets — similar to other emerging economies such as India, which face growing energy demand. While this may be taken as a positive, the 7-10 per cent reduction target is underwhelming for a country that has built up the technological and financial firepower to pursue low-carbon pathways.
The “peak” level of emissions has not been specified, perhaps intentionally. Some analysts estimate that China’s emissions may already have peaked, while others project a likely peak between 2027 and 2030.
If one assumes that 2023 emissions were near peak at 15.94 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO₂e), this would result in 14.35-14.93 GtCO₂e in 2035, applying the 10 per cent and 7 per cent ranges. This would mean an absolute drop of 1.59-1.12 GtCO₂e — roughly equal to Indonesia’s annual emissions in 2023 (1.2 GtCO₂e). Similarly, for an assumed peak of 2028, annual emissions could be 15.08-15.58 GtCO₂e in 2035.
UNEP’s 2019 Emissions Gap Report estimated that global emissions must fall by 7.6 per cent annually from 2019 levels until 2030 to remain on track for the 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C) goal — equivalent to a reduction of around 2.2 GtCO₂e per year. For illustration, if 2023 were the peak year, with a 10 per cent reduction target for China, this could result in 0.13 GtCO₂e annual reductions — constituting just 6 per cent of the global annual emissions reductions needed for 1.5°C.
China’s goal of increasing the share of non-fossil fuels in total energy consumption to over 30 per cent would mean raising the current share of 20 per cent (2024) to more than 30 per cent in the next decade. This target is likely to be exceeded, given that China has steadily raised non-fossil energy from 6 per cent in 2005 to 20 per cent in 2024.
China’s efforts to integrate more wind and solar energy between 2015 and 2024 in its energy mix have made it responsible for almost 39 per cent of the world’s total installed capacity of each energy source. To put it in context, the combined installed solar capacities of Brazil, India, the United States and the EU 27 contribute around 37 per cent.
For its NDC goal of expanding “installed capacity of wind and solar power to over six times the 2020 levels, striving to bring the total to 3,600 gigawatts”, experts point out that “meeting the target requires less than 200 GW of solar and wind per year, versus 360 GW added in 2024 and even more expected this year — the target is likely to be exceeded dramatically.”
The goal of making ‘new energy vehicles’ (NEV) the mainstream in new vehicle sales is also achievable. The International Energy Agency points out: “on a monthly basis, sales of electric cars have overtaken conventional car sales in the country since July 2024, bringing the share of electric car sales close to 50 per cent for the full year”.
Additionally in 2025, “NEV penetration of China’s passenger vehicle market surged to 50.1 per cent, up 8.4 percentage points year-over-year, while ICE vehicle sales fell to 49.9 per cent in H1 2025”.
China’s NDC announcement was hotly anticipated for many reasons: While current climate impacts are attributed mainly to historical developed country polluters (China’s historical emissions stand at 15 per cent of the world total), its role as the largest annual emitter today responsible for one-third of current annual emissions places it in the driving seat for where climate goals go in the coming decades.
Moreover, its positioning as the world’s first electrostate is driving the global clean energy transition. In the context of the US’ regression on climate, expectations were high for China to announce an ambitious NDC and signal its arrival as a climate leader to the world.
China has disappointed the world by offering lowballed, conservative targets that it may most likely overachieve in the coming years, thereby hesitating to accept the spotlight as a climate leader on the global stage. Observers have called China out for “playing it safe”, and for underselling its “current clean energy boom”. Recommendations for a better target stood at around 30 per cent cut to emissions to make Paris goals achievable.
The lack of definition of a ‘peak’ year for emissions and vague targets on mainstreaming EVs add to the calculated ambiguity that a country, whose growth is now driven by clean energy, can easily avoid.
The reasons for this may be as good as anyone’s guess, ranging from turbulent geopolitics and a backtracking Western world leading to China not wanting to overplay its hand, to considerations of energy security and economic growth through high-polluting sectors such as steel and petrochemicals that remain an integral part of China’s growth model.
It remains puzzling that the pure dominance that China has achieved in clean energy has translated into a missed opportunity of not deploying this dominance as a powerful tool through an ambitious NDC signal; particularly as a counter to a climate-denying US.
The statistics are mind-boggling: China’s hold on over 80 per cent of global solar PV manufacturing, its accounting for about 75 per cent of global clean tech manufacturing investment, its rising clean tech exports, its $220 billion of global green FDI since 2022, and interestingly its role in ‘exporting’ emissions reductions abroad.
One may ask, does it really matter, given the real-economy investments and expansion of clean tech productive assets by China that are blanketing the world either way? One may also ask, that while Xi has repeatedly emphasised his commitment to multilateralism, what does their disinterest in offering a “strong” NDC signal say about the multilateral climate regime where an ambitious NDC no longer truly represents a country’s impact on global emissions?
Ultimately, while there is no doubt that the landscape of climate and energy politics will be shaped by China’s actions in the coming decades, a bolder NDC target could have been the siren call announcing this climate leadership in a world desperately in need of it.