The United States\u2019 carbon emissions increased while China\u2019s declined in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2024, pointing to a massive shift in roles between the world\u2019s two biggest climate polluters if the trend continues.<\/p>\n
Between January 1 and June 30 this year, U.S. emissions rose 4.2% while China\u2019s fell 2.7%, reports<\/a> Carbon Monitor, a global emissions tracker led by Tsinghua University, France\u2019s Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences, the University of California, Irvine, and China\u2019s Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Institute.<\/p>\n In China, emissions were down 1.4% across the power sector and industry, and held statistically even across all other economic sectors. The United States was one of just three countries, along with Japan and Brazil, that saw emissions rise across their entire economies\u2014including increases of 2% in ground transport and 1.3% in the power sector.<\/p>\n Across all the individual countries in the Carbon Monitor database, Spain recorded the highest emissions increase, at 6%, followed by Brazil at 5.6%, Germany at 5.2%, the European Union plus the United Kingdom at 4.6%, and the U.S. at 4.2%.<\/p>\n Between the world\u2019s two leading emitters, the data show \u201ca reversal of the usual trend over the past decade, when global heat-trapping emissions inched higher in large part because U.S. reductions have been offset by higher CO2 output from China,\u201d Politico writes<\/a>. \u201cIt also comes after decades of American politicians of both parties complaining about China failing to clean up its act.\u201d<\/p>\n The numbers could still be shifted by factors like weather, short-term economic trends, and natural gas prices, Politico writes. \u201cBut there are also signs of structural changes in the global economy.\u201d International Energy Agency (IEA) figures show Chinese coal consumption falling 2.6% in the first half of the year, largely due to a boom in solar that saw the country add 92 gigawatts of capacity\u2014that\u2019s 92 billion watts\u2014in a single month in May, compared to all-time U.S. installations of 134 GW.<\/p>\n That reflects a fundamental shift in the way China consumes energy, climate scientist Glen Peters of the Oslo-based Center for International Climate Research (CICERO) told Politico, though it\u2019s still early to declare a permanent change. \u201cEven if Chinese emissions decline this year, I would not start saying they have peaked,\u201d he said. \u201cI would want to see emissions trending down for a few years.\u201d<\/p>\n But U.S. per capita emissions are still well above China\u2019s, according to<\/a> the latest IEA data. And with Donald Trump moving on all fronts<\/a> to increase fossil fuel production and revoke renewable energy incentives and confirmed contracts, Stanford University earth systems scientist Rob Jackson said the broader trends are clear\u2014even if it\u2019s too soon to say where the 2025 data will land.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s fair to say that China and the U.S. are on different trajectories now,\u201d he told Politico, with clean technology adoption likely to drive down emissions over the next five years. The U.S., by contrast, is \u201cheading in the opposite direction.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States\u2019 carbon emissions increased while China\u2019s declined in the first half of this year compared to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[3244,3245,18,440,19,17,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-2761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-byline-internal","9":"tag-dow","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}