China's Real-Estate Slump Offset Other CO2 Increases in 2024

China’s carbon dioxide emissions started to decline slightly in March 2024, leveling off in the third quarter of the year. One of the factors contributing to this trend, according to an analysis by Lauri Myllyvirta published on Carbon Brief, is a bittersweet side effect of the country’s real-estate crisis: With less demand for building, fewer CO₂ emissions were produced by the sector.

As the following chart shows, China’s year-on-year change in CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels and cement saw a drop of 90.3 million tonnes of CO₂ in the building materials sector for the period of March to December 2024. Despite this reduction, CO₂ emissions did not fall overall in China in the full year of 2024 due to a high growth in energy demand between March 2023 and February 2024, as the country’s re-opening from zero-Covid “began in earnest”.