The U.S. and China have switched places when it comes to lowering climate pollution.
China’s carbon dioxide emissions fell 2.7 percent in the first half of 2025 while U.S. emissions increased 4.2 percent, according to Carbon Monitor, reversing a long-standing pattern in global climate pollution.
Emissions analysts said it is too soon to declare it a persistent trend, noting that this year’s numbers have been influenced by short-term factors like weather and trade disputes. The figures nevertheless underscore the trajectories of the world’s two largest sources of planet-warming pollution.
Efforts to green the economy are accelerating in China, where solar panel installations are soaring and electric vehicle sales are rising. Analysts increasingly debate whether the country has reached peak CO2 emissions. By contrast, a surge in electricity demand and high natural gas prices have helped revive America’s ailing coal sector, just as President Donald Trump takes an ax to climate regulations and clean energy subsidies.
“It’s fair to say that China and the U.S. are on different trajectories now,” said Rob Jackson, an earth system scientist at Stanford University who tracks global emissions. He predicted China’s emissions would begin falling sometime in the next few years, while the rate of emission reductions in the U.S. would slow.
Global emissions have inched higher over the last decade, as declining CO2 output in the U.S. and Europe has been negated by rising emissions in China and India. Total global emissions were up 0.7 percent through the first half of the year. Europe and India also flipped roles during the first six months of 2025.
India saw emissions decline 2.2 percent since January, according to Carbon Monitor. That reversed a steady increase in CO2 output from the world’s third-largest emitter. Part of the drop is owed to rising renewable energy generation in India. Wind and solar accounted for 14 percent of the country’s power in the first half of 2025, up from 11 percent during the same time in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency.
Weather was an even bigger factor in India’s emissions drop than China’s. The early arrival of monsoon season in May and June meant temperatures were cooler than normal, leading to less coal use. IEA predicts India’s coal generation will rise in the second half of the year.
Europe’s emissions climbed 4.6 percent during the first half of the year. In some ways, the continent is a victim of its own success. It has made significant strides in cutting climate pollution from power plants, said Lauri Myllyvirta, an emissions analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
“Emissions from power generation are now too small to keep driving overall emissions down. Progress has been much slower in other sectors — transportation, buildings and industry,” he said in an email. “The key step now is to start electrifying these sectors rapidly.”
But China is where the biggest changes are occurring. The country has been the largest driver in global emissions growth over the last decade thanks to its voracious appetite for coal-fired power. China accounts for more than half of global coal consumption.
Yet China’s coal consumption fell 2.6 percent in the first half of 2025 compared to the same time in 2024, even as electricity demand rose 5 percent, according to IEA.
The drop was particularly notable because it coincided with a drought in two provinces that account for most of China’s hydro power capacity. Historically, that would have been a recipe for lower hydro output and higher coal generation, but that didn’t happen in the first half of the year. Instead, hydro and coal fell in tandem while renewable generation picked up the slack.
Solar energy surged 45 percent compared to the first half of 2024. The spike came after China installed a staggering 92 gigawatts of solar capacity in May alone, taking the total capacity of its solar fleet to more than 1 terawatts, according to IEA. To put that in context, total U.S. solar capacity was about 134 GW at the end of June.
Those developments have led analysts like Myllyvirta to argue that China may be on the verge of achieving peak carbon emissions.
“Once China’s emissions peak, a global emission peak should follow,” he said. “This is particularly true if the current acceleration in clean energy uptake in other emerging and developing economies continues, limiting emissions growth.”
Glen Peters, a senior scientist at the Center for International Climate Research, said he would not read too much into China’s carbon reductions, for now. He agreed that its falling emissions were likely due to structural changes, but added, “Even if Chinese emissions decline this year, I would not start saying they have peaked. I would want to see emissions trending down for a few years.”
The U.S. is the wild card. Emissions have steadily declined in the U.S. over 15 years, thanks in large part to falling coal consumption. That was also true during Trump’s first term, when almost a fifth of the country’s coal capacity shut down.
Coal generation is up 14 percent through the first six months of the year, according to preliminary data collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It comes amid robust electricity demand and higher natural gas prices. EIA data shows that about 30 GW of coal capacity is scheduled to close during Trump’s second term, down from 48 GW during his first stint in the Oval Office.
But there are questions about how many of those closures will actually occur. Trump has taken emergency action to keep some coal plants open, while some utilities are voluntarily postponing coal facility retirements amid rising electricity demand.
“The past two quarters are an anomaly, but they do reflect changing tides in China, where emissions are finally falling or at least plateauing, [in] India where clean energy growth is beginning to eat into emissions increases, and a much more challenging environment for clean energy in the U.S.,” Myllyvirta said.
