China is set to add at least 570 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar power in the 14th five-year plan (FYP) period (2021–25), more than doubling its installed capacity in just five years, if targets announced by the central and provincial governments are realised. Our compilation and analysis of targets and projects announced by the central and provincial governments shows wind and solar capacity would reach more than 1,100GW by 2025, tripling the 360GW total installed in 2015 and doubling the 536GW at the end of 2020. The wind and solar plans emerging from recent policymaking are far ahead of th ..read more

Emissions equivalent to nearly a quarter of the US total since 2005 have come from fossil fuels extracted on the nation’s public lands and waters, according to recent analysis. The study, published in Climatic Change, assesses the volumes of greenhouse gases generated by extracting and burning coal, oil and natural gas from regions owned by the federal government.  It also estimates how much this will change over the next decade, concluding that “minimal” reductions to these emissions are expected by 2030, the date by which the US has committed to cutting its emissions to 50-52% below 200 ..read more

After weeks of rumour and speculation, Boris Johnson’s plan for how the UK can ensure its energy security amid climate change, a cost-of-living crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has finally been published. The government’s energy security strategy, released in full on Thursday afternoon, is shaped by ambitious – yet vague – promises for nuclear power and offshore wind, with little mention of new measures for energy efficiency or onshore wind. It says some 95% of the country’s electricity could come from low-carbon sources by 2030, ahead of the government’s existing aim of decarbonising t ..read more

Late last year, following widespread power shortages, China’s leadership repeatedly emphasised the importance of ensuring energy security – a country’s ability to secure sufficient and affordable energy supplies without interruption.  Since then, China – the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2) – has seen an intense push to increase the production and supply of coal, its main energy source. The nation’s daily output from coal mining has set “record highs” multiple times in recent months due to boosts in production capacity. The coal stock at coal-fired power plants has been kep ..read more

Combating the climate crisis requires the restructuring of the economic and energy system including, first and foremost, the phaseout of coal, which is the highest-emitting energy source.  The changes that go hand-in-hand with this restructuring do not happen in a vacuum, but instead interact with existing power asymmetries in societies.  This means that they affect different social groups, such as men and women, in different ways.   In the discourse around the coal phaseout and the policies accompanying it, the focus is on the predominantly male miners employed in the indu ..read more

Experts see heat pumps as one of the main solutions for tackling the carbon emissions associated with keeping buildings warm, both in the UK and internationally. Yet sales of the technology, often likened to a fridge running in reverse, have remained stubbornly low in many countries. The latest figures, collated in this article for Carbon Brief, show the tides beginning to turn, with sales in 2021 seeing double-digit growth in countries ranging from Austria to China. While rapid growth in the market seems assured, heat pumps might still fall short of the levels required for a global pathw ..read more

The UK made history in November 2021 by helping to secure the first mention of the need to tackle fossil fuels in a global climate agreement, at the COP26 summit in Glasgow. But just months later, the UK government is reportedly considering “fast-tracking” new North Sea oil and gas licences, amid pressure from a vocal minority of Conservative politicians and commentators who claim new fossil fuel production is the solution to the energy crisis. Unlike other countries, such as Denmark, Ireland and France, the UK has not ruled out issuing new licences for offshore oil and gas exploration. Instea ..read more

In September 2020, China pledged to become carbon neutral by 2060 and this climate target was officially submitted in an updated nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) last October. More than a year has now passed since China’s initial announcement. What expectations of progress does the world have of China – and has China lived up to them?  To explore these questions, my colleagues and I have examined China’s domestic and foreign policymaking – with a focus on the energy transition, sustainable finance and innov ..read more

India has made ambitious pledges to restore forests to tackle climate change, alongside many other countries. But what that goal looks like in practice is not yet well understood.  Our study, published in Conservation Letters, uses detailed spatial mapping to estimate how much land is available to be reforested in India, which regions would be most appropriate and how reforestation could contribute to meeting the country’s climate goals. The reality looks quite different. Restoring forests on available land – that is, land not currently used for anything else – achieves only 10% of what I ..read more

Four of the world’s largest oil-and-gas companies are failing to back their words and pledges on climate change with genuine action and investment, a new study says. Mentions of climate change and low-carbon energy have roughly tripled in annual reports from Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell over the past decade. But even as these firms issue pledges to cut emissions and invest in renewables, the study concludes that such a transition is simply “not occurring” as all four companies continue to focus primarily on producing fossil fuels. The study, published in PLOS ONE, comes in the wake o ..read more