The United States did not send “even a note taker” to this year’s COP meeting, an annual gathering of nations focused on climate change, this year being convened in Brazil.
Another opportunity for China to demonstrate and flex its emerging global leadership.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential Presidential candidate in 2028, and a sharp critic of the current administration, did appear, representing, as he likes to remind us, “the world’s 4th largest economy”.
China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were unchanged from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2025, extending a flat or falling trend that started in March 2024.
The rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) saw CO2 emissions from transport fuel drop by 5% year-on-year, while there were also declines from cement and steel production.
The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that while emissions from the power sector were flat year-on-year, a big rise in the chemical industry’s CO2 output offset reductions elsewhere.
Other key findings include:
- Power-sector CO2 emissions were flat in the third quarter, even as electricity demand growth accelerated to 6.1%, from 3.7% in the first half of the year.
- This was achieved thanks to electricity generation from solar growing by 46% and wind by 11% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2025.
- In the first nine months of the year, China completed 240 gigawatts (GW) of solar and 61GW of wind capacity, putting it on track for a new renewable record in 2025.
- Oil demand and emissions in the transport sector fell by 5% in the third quarter, but grew elsewhere by 10%, as the production of plastics and other chemicals surged.
After the first three quarters of the year, China’s CO2 emissions in 2025 are now finely balanced between a small fall or rise, depending on what happens in the last quarter.
The absence of the US administration at the two-week-long COP30 summit at the Amazonian port city of Belém in Brazil, which kicked off on Monday, has put the spotlight on China as well as the world’s other big emitters, such as India, which has not yet submitted its updated climate plan.
Almost 50,000 people had registered to attend the conference, according to the UN. China, alongside the UK and Brazil, hosted talks on tackling methane and other non-CO₂ gases on the weekend.
It was attended by Huang Runqiu, China’s minister of ecology and environment, who said that addressing climate change “requires concerted efforts from the entire world.”
On the opening day of the summit, COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago noted that China was playing a “very significant” role, highlighting how its green technology, from solar to batteries, had driven down costs and transformed the global energy system.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is in Brazil for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP30, where he’ll spend the week promoting California’s clean air efforts and criticizing President Donald Trump.
In São Paulo on Monday, while speaking at Milken Institute’s Global Investors Symposium, Newsom repeatedly blasted the Trump administration for not even sending “a note-taker.”
“I apologize for being so partisan here,” Newsom said. “I literally came out here. I’m just stunned. I got four kids. The hell is going on in my country now? Not one person from the administration showed any respect. For any of you. Forget politics, disrespect. We’re in Brazil, one of our great trading partners, one of the world’s great democracies.”
“You need rare earth minerals?” Newsom continued. “This is the country we should be engaging. Instead, middle finger with 50% tariffs. That’s shameful.”
KCRA 3 reached out to the White House for comment but did not hear back as of late Monday afternoon.