Explainer: What does China’s ‘two sessions’ mean for climate policy in 2025?

Explainer: What does China’s ‘two sessions’ mean for climate policy in 2025?

China’s climate ambition at this year’s “two sessions” (两会), which ended on 11 March, was relatively subdued, with analysts expecting economic concerns to trump climate action in the year ahead.

The “two sessions”, which takes place every spring, is a major political event held in Beijing that gives an indication of China’s broad policy direction for the year.

It covers every area of governance, including energy and climate policy.

In this article, Carbon Brief outlines key signals from the 2025 “two sessions”, including: a new energy target for 2025; clean-energy and climate priorities; the ongoing development of coal in a “supporting role”; and China’s response to “green trade barriers”.

This is an update of Carbon Brief’s 6 March China Briefing newsletter, expanded to cover developments during the last few days of the event.
A key meeting

The “two sessions” (两会) is the annual gathering of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). This year, it ran from 4 to 11 March.

The gathering is attended by Chinese Communist party members, as well as members of other political parties, academics, industry leaders and other prominent figures, known as delegates or deputies.

Its centrepiece is the “government work report”, a speech delivered by the premier – the head of China’s State Council, the top body of the country’s central government. This outlines the previous year’s achievements and priorities for the year ahead, including the annual GDP target.

At the meeting, China also releases a report by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planning body, as well as a central and local government budget report.

In addition, the event allows thousands of delegates to meet and raise policy proposals with senior government officials.
Low energy target

China pledged to reduce energy intensity – a measure of energy consumption per unit of GDP – by 3% in 2025, the work report said. (This measure now excludes renewables and nuclear, meaning it only applies to fossil fuels.)

This target means China is “on track to miss its 14th five-year plan energy intensity target”, Yao Zhe, global policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, tells Carbon Brief.

She adds that it was an “inconvenient truth” that China’s economy has not become much more energy efficient in recent years, “offset[ting]…the decarbonisation effects of renewable technology deployment”.

China is lagging behind on its 2026 targets for reducing both energy intensity and carbon intensity – the amount of CO2 emissions per unit of GDP. Analysis for Carbon Brief has shown that they would need to fall by 6% and 7% per year, respectively, to meet the targets.

In its report, the NDRC attributed the shortfall in China’s 2024 carbon-intensity reduction figures to “rapid growth in the energy consumption in industries and the civilian sector as a result of post-Covid economic recovery and frequent extreme weather events”.

Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), wrote on Bluesky that the low target “shows the government is not prioritising controlling carbon dioxide (CO2) at the moment”.

He also said the new methodology for calculating energy intensity would, in theory, allow fossil-fuel demand to grow by 1.9% in 2025, pushing CO2 emissions up by more than 2%. (He added that he did not think this would actually happen.)

The 14th five-year plan’s carbon-intensity target, which measures CO2 emissions per unit of GDP, will likely also be missed, according to the Carbon Brief analysis. China does not typically announce annual carbon-intensity targets in the government work report.

The targets that were announced underscored that “economic growth remains the top priority, with environmental goals taking a backseat”, Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub and senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), tells Carbon Brief.

The lack of an annual carbon-intensity target was “a further sign of carbon reduction being downplayed”, he adds.
Priorities in 2025

China’s climate and energy policy in 2025 will likely follow well-established priorities, such as balancing decarbonisation and energy security, based on the report’s language.

The state-run newspaper China Daily highlighted the report’s support of China’s “dual-carbon” goals on its frontpage, saying that China pledged to “diligently work” towards them.

According to the work report, China “will develop a package of major projects for climate change response and actively engage in and steer global environmental and climate governance”.

A number of climate measures were announced, but Li tells Carbon Brief that there were “no major surprises”, confirming his view that the “two sessions” has “increasingly become a platform to confirm pre-existing decisions rather than introduce new ones”.

Each year, the government work report lists a number of top priorities for the year ahead, as shown in the figure below.

For 2025, the report lowers the importance of high-quality development in favour of “expanding domestic demand”. The prioritisation of “low-carbon development” and other climate related tasks remained the same compared to 2024. Ranking of key tasks in each government work report during the 14th five-year plan period (2021-2025). Source: Xinhua publications of the government work reports for 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021.

The report discusses China’s climate and environment efforts for 2025 under the title:


“Making coordinated efforts to cut carbon emissions, reduce pollution, pursue green development, and boost economic growth and accelerat[e] the green transition in all areas of economic and social development.”

This stands in stark contrast to the climate section’s title last year, which only highlighted “enhancing ecological conservation and promoting green and low-carbon development”.

The expanded wording signals a more “comprehensive design at the policy level” to “systematically enhance the integration of different sectors for tackling environmental problems”, Xu Song, a registered environment evaluator in China, wrote on his WeChat account.

The work report lists a number of climate initiatives for the year ahead, including: expanding pilot programmes for local governments to peak carbon emissions; building “zero-carbon industrial parks”; accelerating the shift from “dual-control” of energy to dual-control of carbon emissions; and including more industries in the national carbon market.

Most importantly, renewable energy buildouts will continue, with a particular focus on “new energy bases in desert areas, the Gobi and other arid areas”, as well as offshore wind. The report also recognises the need for China to upgrade its electricity grid to cope with vast renewables additions.

But the report also continues to commit to fossil-fuel infrastructure. It reiterates calls to “better ensure both development and security”, which for the energy sector means that China should pursue a low-carbon transition while ensuring sufficient energy supply by keeping some fossil-fuel capacity.

This year, it says China will launch “low-carbon upgrade trials” for coal-fired power plants, which are seen as necessary for energy security. (Recent analysis found that a “substantial amount” of new coal capacity will soon come online.)

The separate NDRC report also reinforces coal as having a “basic supporting role” , announcing that China will “continue to increase coal production”.

The table below compares the language used in relation to coal in government work reports from 2021-2025.
20212022202320242025While promoting the clean and efficient use of coal, we will make a major push to develop new energy sources, and take active and well-ordered steps to develop nuclear energy on the basis of
ensuring its safe use. We will work to upgrade coal-fired power plants to conserve resources, reduce carbon emissions, make operations more flexible, and upgrade heating facilities. We leveraged the role of coal as a major source of energy, increased advanced coal production capacity and stepped up support for power plants and heat-supply enterprises to ensure energy supplies. We will see that coal and coal-fired power play their crucial role in ensuring energy supply and our energy supply meets the needs of economic and social development. Low-carbon upgrade trials will be launched in coal-fired power plants.
A table comparing the language used around coal in government work reports during the 14th five-year plan period (2021-2025). Source: Xinhua publications of the government work reports for 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021.

Ilaria Mazzocco, senior fellow with the trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), tells Carbon Brief that the signal that coal would only have a supporting role in the future energy system was a “good sign”, but that the language underscored that there is “little interest” in phasing out coal “for now”.

The NDRC also pledged to reduce steel output and to encourage oil refiners to produce more petrochemical products instead of fuel.
Consumption and ‘involution’

Boosting domestic consumption is seen as key to achieving China’s 2025 GDP target of 5%. Consequently, it replaces fostering innovation as the top priority for policymakers for the year, as shown in the chart above.

China’s approach to boosting growth includes a number of stimulus measures. The net impact of these measures on China’s emissions, such via the building of energy-intensive infrastructure, is currently unknown, however.

At this year’s meeting, the government stated that domestic consumption will be the “main engine” for economic growth in 2025.

“The big question mark is real estate and construction”, Myllyvirta tells Carbon Brief. Real estate and construction have been the biggest driver of domestic consumption for decades.

However, Myllyvirta adds that the government would likely aim for stable growth in the sector, rather than stimulating it with rapid and energy-intensive growth.

In part, China is putting its hopes – and 300bn yuan ($41bn) – into a consumer trade-in programme, which will likely continue to allow drivers to swap combustion-engine cars for “new-energy” vehicles (NEVs, which refers to electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids).

The report also pledges to incentivise “eco-friendly consumption”.

While technological innovation remains a major priority, clean-energy technologies are not explicitly mentioned in the government work report in this context.

Last year’s government work report emphasised the need to “consolidate and enhance [China’s] leading position” in industries such as NEVs and hydrogen, as well as to “create new ways of storing energy”.

Nevertheless, according to power news outlet BJX News, this is not a signal that clean-energy technologies are out of favour, but rather a sign that they are already widely recognised as an essential part of China’s technology strategy.

Similarly, although hydrogen is not explicitly named as a “future industry” in the government work report, the NDRC confirmed it will receive support from a one trillion yuan ($138bn) fund that will be issued for “frontier fields”.

In its budget report, China’s Ministry of Finance pledges to “steadily promote” China’s climate action, such as by strengthening financial support for R&D for low-carbon technologies, enhancing the development of renewable energy, promoting NEVs and developing green finance standards and institutions.

This year’s government work report also emphasises the need to combat “rat-race competition” – a reference to what is described in China as “involution”. This term refers to the overcrowded markets and price wars plaguing some sectors, including NEVs and solar panels. The report states it will take “comprehensive” steps to address the problem.

The NDRC report notes that the government will take steps to “promote orderly development” of the NEV, lithium-ion battery and solar industries, underscoring government concerns about the sector.

Nevertheless, the government does recognise the importance of clean-energy technologies to economic growth, Mazzocco tells Carbon Brief. She explains:


“Energy is now seen as a tool to ensure the economy can grow rapidly and is meant to support technological transformation…Climate per se is not a goal that the Chinese government wants to prioritise over economic growth and international competition.”

Geopolitics

Trade tensions that underpinned the political atmosphere during last year’s two sessions have been exacerbated by a number of developments since then – particularly around export controls and tariffs.

This is reflected in the work report, which notes that “increasingly complex and severe” geopolitical tensions may “exert a greater impact on China in areas such as trade, science and technology”.

In response, the government will “take active steps to respond to green trade barriers” – pointing to the trade measures above as well as the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) – the report says.

However, in a press conference at the event, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi said that he believed China and the EU had the “capacity and wisdom” to resolve disagreements through consultations.

China will also continue to help African nations develop in “green sectors”, Wang said, building on language in the government work report that pledges to continue with “high-quality” projects in Belt and Road Initiative partner countries.
Extreme weather

There was continued recognition of the drag of “natural disasters” on China’s economic growth, with the work report pledging to “better guard against and respond” to floods, droughts, typhoons and other extreme weather events.

The report notes that floods “occurred frequently in some parts of China” last year. This was not explicitly linked to climate change.

However, the NDRC report attributes China’s failure to meet its energy-intensity goal in 2024 to, in part, “frequent extreme weather events”.

A recent Carbon Brief analysis found that, of 114 attribution studies for Chinese extreme weather events, 88 had their “severity or likelihood” increased by climate change.
Around the two sessions

Apart from the ministers and senior officials delivering work reports, side meetings between central leaders and local officials at the “two sessions” also send out political signals.

This year, President Xi Jinping met with a delegation from Jiangsu – an eastern province that is known for its affluent economy, manufacturing, strength in exports and technological innovation.

At the meeting, Xi emphasised the “need to upgrade traditional sectors and foster future sources of innovation”, although he also warned against creating industry “bubbles”, reports the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

He added that policymakers should “actively promote high-end, intelligent and green development of industries”.

Meanwhile, MEE head Huang Runqiu emphasised the importance of low-carbon development, both in a meeting with a delegation from the northern Heilongjiang province and in a “minister’s corridor” press conference.

Delegates raised more than 700 policy proposals on “ecological civilisation” at this year’s meetings, energy news outlet BJX News reports, covering areas including addressing China’s industrial energy transition and developing the carbon market.

Among these, the US-based NPC Observer newsletter says, were two bills proposing the enactment of a “climate change response law” that would develop a legislative scheme for reducing carbon emissions.

Finally, as the meetings came to a close, NPC head Zhao Leji confirmed that the legislative body will continue to work on China’s environment and ecology code, according to news reports, as well as the atomic energy law in the year ahead.