DeBriefed 16 May 2025: Has China’s CO2 peaked?; US bill ‘would kill IRA’; Poland’s coal collapse

Simon Evans

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

§ This week

US budget bill ‘would kill IRA’

WAYS AND MEANS: The future of Joe Biden’s signature climate policy, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), is in doubt after Republicans on two key Congressional committees passed budget proposals that “would effectively kill” it, reported Heatmap News. The proposals would end clean-energy tax credits and rebates for electric vehicle (EV) purchases, “claw back” climate grants and “slash” related spending, said Reuters.

DEFENCE DOUBTS: While a “small subset” of House Republicans have been trying to defend the IRA, it is unclear if they would block passage of the wider budget bill to get their way, according to E&E News. In the Senate, Politico said “some” Republicans are “pushing back” on the current proposals. A New York Times feature said Republican districts “have the most to lose” if all of the IRA tax credits are repealed. Semafor reported Republicans were “wrestling with possible failure” of the bill, in the face of opposition from Democrats and their own ranks. (Law firm Grant Thornton said policymakers were hoping to pass the bill by 4 July.)

SOCIAL COST: Meanwhile, a new White House memo directed US government agencies to disregard economic damages from climate change, reported E&E News. Under a headline asking, “What’s the cost of pollution? Trump says zero”, the New York Times explained that the “social cost of carbon” had been used for more than two decades to help weigh the costs and benefits of federal policies and regulations. It said the move could face legal challenges.

§ Around the world

  • DOWNPOUR DEATHS: More than 100 people were killed by floods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Agence-France Presse reported. Extreme rainfall also killed at least seven people in Somalia, the Associated Press said.
  • PARIS PERIL: A UK opposition minister falsely attacked climate science and said his party could exit the Paris Agreement if elected, the Guardian said. The Guardian also reported on how Australia’s new opposition leader “could abandon net-zero”.
  • GERMAN GAS: New economy minister Katharina Reiche wants more gas-fired power plants, according to Die Zeit. The country’s climate council warned the new government’s plans could breach climate goals, said Clean Energy Wire.
  • DENGUE DANGER: Colombia’s El Espectador reported on rising climate-driven risks from dengue fever in Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Panama.
  • COP30 CREW: The Brazilian COP30 presidency has appointed 30 envoys, including “key liaisons” for strategic regions such as China’s Xie Zhenhua, Jonathan Pershing from the US and former UNFCCC chief Patricia Espinosa, Climate Home News said.

§ 60%

The yearly rise in EV sales in emerging markets in Asia and Latin America in 2024, according to new data from the International Energy Agency.

§ Latest climate research

  • Even passing 1.5C of global warming temporarily would trigger a “significant” risk of Amazon forest “dieback”, said research covered by Carbon Brief.
  • Rapidly rising emissions from China’s agricultural machinery could “hinder” the country’s push towards net-zero, according to a study covered by Carbon Brief.
  • Findings in Environmental Research Letters found that the benefits of CO2 “fertilisation” on forests are likely to be constrained by warming.

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

§ Captured

Image (note)

For the first time on record, China’s CO2 emissions have fallen as a result of clean energy expansion rather than weak growth in electricity demand, according to new analysis for Carbon Brief. The analysis, which has been covered by outlets including AFP, Semafor and the New York Times, found that China’s emissions from fossil fuels and cement fell 1.6% in the first quarter of 2025 and are now 1% below the peak reached in March 2024. The months ahead will be critical for what comes next, as Beijing is working to finalise its next international climate pledge for 2035 and its five-year plan for 2026-2030.

§ Spotlight

How Poland started speeding away from coal power

This week, Carbon Brief reports on coal falling to barely half of Poland’s power supplies.

The first round of Poland’s presidential election is on Sunday and Rafał Trzaskowski, from prime minister Donald Tusk’s centre-right party Civic Platform, is favoured to win.

Long seen as one of the world’s most coal-reliant countries, Poland’s electricity system is in the midst of dramatic and increasingly rapid change.

When Poland joined the EU in 2004, coal-fired power stations supplied 93% of the country’s electricity. Coal accounted for more than three-quarters of the total as recently as 2018, the year the country hosted COP24 in Katowice.

Since then, a gradual shuffle away from coal has turned to a sprint.

In 2024, coal generated little more than half of Poland’s electricity, according to data from thinktank Ember – and a coal power phaseout by 2035 is now seen as a realistic prospect.

While the topic has not played a big role in the election campaign, there is now broad public acceptance that “coal is over in Poland”, said Joanna Maćkowiak-Pandera, president of Polish thinktank Forum Energii. She told Carbon Brief:

“The extreme rightwing tries to claim that coal is the future and there is coal for [another] 400 years…[But] even the coal-mining sector does not believe it.”

As of 2024, coal contributed just 53.5% of electricity generation in Poland, with wind and solar making up 23.5%, gas power 12.1% and other renewables another 6.3%.

Coal ‘death spiral’

The “death spiral” for coal power is due to the high cost of coal mining in Poland, the old age of coal power plants, pressure from climate policies such as the EU emissions trading system (EUETS) and a loss of market share to renewables, said Maćkowiak-Pandera:

“You can be pro-coal, but you will not change the economics, physics, geology and the reality of the financial market.”

Until 2023, the right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) had held the reins of government, having won the 2015 election after promising to protect the coal industry.

Following power cuts that summer, however, PiS increasingly accepted that renewbles – particularly solar power – could support energy security, explained Maćkowiak-Pandera.

(Renewables enjoy broad public support and are associated with energy security, she said.)

With backing from government policy, Poland’s solar capacity leapt from just 200 megawatts in 2015 to more than 20 gigawatts in 2024 – a 100-fold increase.

Still, PiS strongly resisted calls to phase out coal. In 2020, it struck a deal with unions to subsidise the Polish coal-mining industry until 2049. The subsidies remain in place.

After winning parliamentary elections in 2023, Tusk promised a “much faster energy transition” based on renewables and nuclear power, said Maćkowiak-Pandera.

While utility firms would “really love” to phase out coal plants within as little as three to five years, there is a growing consensus around 2035 as a more achievable end date, she said:

“It’s really not controversial any more…I speak with politicians, with utilities, with [electricity] transmission system operators, even with miners. Everybody is aware of the situation.”

Instead, there is a practical conversation around how best to replace coal at the lowest cost, explained Maćkowiak-Pandera.

This will mean more renewables, but also the flexible capacity needed to manage the grid – including some new gas-fired power plants –  as well as energy storage and market reforms, she said.

Poland’s rapid transition may not have made many headlines, but other major coal-burning countries are starting to pay attention.

Maćkowiak-Pandera has welcomed delegations from China, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil, eager to learn about Poland’s experience. She added:

“For Chinese partners, it’s interesting because they like [our] pragmatic approach…they like that Poland [is] sometimes not mentioning climate, [but] is doing it anyhow.”

§ Watch, read, listen

CHINESE CROWING: A widely shared blog post on nationalist media outlet Guancha said China was taking climate action to “win the future energy revolution” and, among other things, to “save at least $600bn” on imported oil by shifting to EVs.

‘RUNNING BLIND’: For the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, climate scientist Peter Gleick said the Trump administration’s “purges” of climate research were “threats to national security”.
‘REALISM’ REJECTED: The Wicked Problems podcast discussed the “defeatism” behind a recent initiative calling for “climate realism”, as well as the “abundance agenda”.

§ Coming up

§ Pick of the jobs

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to [email protected].

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