Update: Have China's emissions finally peaked?
Zero: The Climate Race
Bloomberg
4.8 • 296 Ratings
🗓️ 24 December 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode was originally recorded in July 2025, and updated in December 2025. Happy Holidays from the Zero team.
When exactly China’s emissions peak will make a big difference to the fate of the planet. That moment has come, according to Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. A combination of factors – including a huge deployment of renewables and electrification of transport – has put China’s emissions into a structural decline. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi asks Myllyvirta how confident he is that this really is a peak? What’s behind the decline in emissions? And how will the trade war with the US affect China’s climate and energy policies in the years to come?
Explore further:
- Lauri's latest analysis for Carbon Brief.
- Global Carbon Budget analysis.
- Analysis: Clean energy just put China’s CO2 emissions into reverse for first time - Carbon Brief
- China Set to Reach Peak Emissions Before 2030, Ex-Official Says - Bloomberg
- China’s Solar Industry Gathers as Gloom Deepens Over Demand — Bloomberg
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome. |
| 0:01.8 | This is The Michelle Hussein Show. |
| 0:04.2 | I'm Michelle Hussein. |
| 0:05.7 | I speak with people like Elon Musk. |
| 0:08.2 | I think I've done enough. |
| 0:09.2 | And Shonda Rhymes. |
| 0:10.1 | That's so cute. |
| 0:11.0 | This will be a place where every weekend you can count on one essential conversation |
| 0:16.7 | to help make sense of the world. |
| 0:19.1 | So please join me. |
| 0:20.4 | Listen and subscribe to the Mishal Hussein |
| 0:23.2 | show from Bloomberg weekend, wherever you get your podcast. You certainly ask interesting questions. |
| 0:33.0 | Hello, Aksha. Hi, Asker. So we're about to take a short Christmas break on Zero, and most of today's episode is going to be a replay of one of our favourite episodes of the past year. |
| 0:44.1 | It's an interview with Larry Muleverta, co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. |
| 0:50.4 | And that interview is all about trying to answer the question that everyone in the climate world really wants to know the answer to, which is, have China's emissions finally peaked? |
| 1:00.0 | But before we dive into the main conversation with Larry, a lot has been moving in this space, so we thought we wanted to do a quick update on the topic. |
| 1:08.0 | So actually, in the episode, Larry talks about China's emissions |
| 1:10.9 | flatlining or following a slight downward trend, but you both acknowledge in the interview |
| 1:16.4 | that there's some uncertainty there about whether they are indeed plateaued or potentially |
| 1:21.1 | falling. Almost six months on from that episode being recorded, has the trend continued? |
| 1:27.2 | Peaks are very hard to call in advance. |
| 1:29.8 | Often you really only know maybe a couple of years after the peak has happened that indeed |
... |
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