Shift Key with Robinson Meyer12 Nov 2025

Shift Key Classic: Have China’s Carbon Emissions Peaked?

Robinson Meyer and Jesse Jenkins are off this week. Please enjoy this selection from the Shift Key archive.

China’s greenhouse gas emissions were essentially flat in 2024 — or they recorded a tiny increase, according to a November report from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, or CREA. A third of experts surveyed by the report believe that its coal emissions have peaked. Has the world’s No. 1 emitter of carbon pollution now turned a corner on climate change?

Lauri Myllyvirta is the co-founder and lead analyst at CREA, an independent research organization focused on air pollution and headquartered in Finland. Myllyvirta has worked on climate policy, pollution, and energy issues in Asia for the past decade, and he lived in Beijing from 2015 to 2019.

On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with Lauri about why the country is still building so much coal power (along with gobs of solar and wind), and the energy-intensive shift that its economy has taken in the past five years. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.

Mentioned:

CREA’s reports on China’s emissions trajectory

Chinese EV companies beat their own targets in 2024

Jeremy Wallace: China Can’t Decide if It Wants to Be the World’s First ‘Electrostate’

This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …

Hydrostor is building the future of energy with Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage. Delivering clean, reliable power with 500-megawatt facilities sited on 100 acres, Hydrostor’s energy storage projects are transforming the grid and creating thousands of American jobs. Learn more at hydrostor.ca.

Uplight is a clean energy technology company that helps energy providers unlock grid capacity by activating energy customers and their connected devices to generate, shift, and save energy. The Uplight Demand Stack — which integrates energy efficiency, electrification, rates, and flexibility programs — improves grid resilience, reduces costs, and accelerates decarbonization for energy providers and their customers. Learn more at uplight.com/heatmap.

Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

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