The energy field is changing (Image: Jerry Ojang/Getty)

New energy policies in China are being heralded as the source of a potentially historic break in the link between global economic growth and rising carbon dioxide emissions.

Last year, carbon emissions were unchanged even as the global economy grew by 3 per cent compared with 2013, according to a report by Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21), a think tank linked to the UN Environment Programme.

Arthouros Zervos, the REN21 network’s chair, called this “the landmark decoupling” of economic growth and carbon emissions and said it “is due in large measure to China’s increased use of renewable resources”.


China is the world’s biggest installer of wind, solar and hydroelectric power plants, and last year for the first time it reduced coal burning. Other leading investors in renewables in 2014 were the US, Japan, the UK and Germany.

The network’s latest annual Renewables Global Status Report finds that investment in green electricity last year exceeded that in fossil fuel-burning capacity for the fifth year running, and renewables made up 59 per cent of added generating capacity.

Good cop and bad cop

It follows an analysis earlier this week by the International Energy Agency predicting that, thanks to renewables and growing energy efficiency, an 88 per cent growth in the global economy by 2030 may be accompanied by emissions growth of just 8 per cent.

The prospect of a deal on curbing carbon emissions at the UN climate summit in Paris in December may have played a role in the big recent shift away from fossil fuels such as coal.

But with costs of solar power in particular continuing to fall, economic factors are shifting in renewables’ favour, according to Ted Nace, director of CoalSwarm, an energy think tank supported by the Sierra Club and other American NGOs.

Nace warns, however, that public subsidies worth trillions of dollars a year are sustaining continued investment in fossil fuels, especially in developing countries. And again, China is at the forefront.

“Domestically China is doing a good job of reining in coal power and developing renewables,” Nace says. “But overseas, Chinese companies, with Chinese finance, continue to promote coal power in more than 30 countries, including India, Pakistan and Indonesia.”