World News

From the summary bullet points:

• The solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles (EVs) and wind turbines exported from China in 2024 are set to cut annual CO2 emissions in the rest of the world by 1%, some 220m tonnes (MtCO2).
• Manufacturing these products resulted in an estimated 110MtCO2 within China in 2024, implying that the upfront CO2 emissions are offset in much less than a year of operation.
• Over the expected lifetime of these products, their manufacturing emissions will be offset almost 40-fold, with cumulative CO2 savings reaching 4.0GtCO2.
• When factoring in China’s plans to build overseas manufacturing plants for clean-energy products, as well as to construct overseas clean-power projects, the avoided CO2 increases to 350MtCO2 per year. This is 1.5% of global emissions outside China and almost equal to the annual emissions of Australia.
• The largest emission reductions are associated with direct clean-technology equipment exports – particularly solar panels – followed by manufacturing at Chinese factories overseas, with overseas projects financed by Chinese investors a distant third.
• China’s clean-energy footprint almost spans the entire world, with exports to 191 of the 192 other UN member states, as well as manufacturing and project finance investments in dozens of countries.
• Clean-energy exports from China in 2024 alone, along with its overseas investments from 2023 and 2024, are set to cut emissions in sub-Saharan Africa by around 3% per year once completed and in the Middle East and north Africa (MENA) region by 4.5%.