English references

Consumers ending up shouldering most of the costs of installing and operating CCS in the UK, a new report has found.

Taking a closer look at AI’s supposed energy apocalypse

Despite concerns over the environmental impacts of AI models, it's surprisingly hard to find precise, reliable data on the CO2 emissions and water use for many major large language models. French model-maker Mistral is seeking to fix that this week, releasing details from what it calls a first-of-its-kind environmental audit "to quantify the environmental impacts of our LLMs."

Identifying the socio-economic drivers behind greenhouse gas emissions is crucial to design mitigation policies. Existing studies predominantly analyze short-term CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, neglecting long-term trends and other GHGs. We examine the drivers of all greenhouse gas emissions between 1820–2050 globally and regionally. The Industrial Revolution triggered sustained emission growth worldwide—initially through fossil fuel use in industrialized economies but also as a result of agricultural expansion and deforestation. Globally, technological innovation and energy mix changes prevented 31 (17–42) Gt CO2e emissions over two centuries. Yet these gains were dwarfed by 81 (64–97) Gt CO2e resulting from economic expansion, with regional drivers diverging sharply: population growth dominated in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, while rising affluence was the main driver of emissions elsewhere. Meeting climate targets now requires the carbon intensity of GDP to decline 3 times faster than the global

In a rapidly changing climate, evidence-based decision-making benefits from up-to-date and timely information. Here we compile monitoring datasets (published at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15639576; Smith et al., 2025a) to produce updated estimates for key indicators of the state of the climate system: net emissions of greenhouse gases and short-lived climate forcers, greenhouse gas concentrations, radiative forcing, the Earth's energy imbalance, surface temperature changes, warming attributed to human activities, the remaining carbon budget, and estimates of global temperature extremes. This year, we additionally include indicators for sea-level rise and land precipitation change. We follow methods as closely as possible to those used in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group One report.

Critical minerals, which are essential for a range of energy technologies and for the broader economy, have become a major focus in global policy and trade discussions. Price volatility, supply chain bottlenecks and geopolitical concerns make the regular monitoring of their supply and demand extremely vital.

Clean-energy sectors drove a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2024 and have overtaken real-estate sales in value. The new sector-by-sector analysis for Carbon Brief, based on official figures, industry data and analyst reports, shows the growing role of clean technology in China’s economy – particularly the so-called “new three” industries, namely, solar, electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries.

There are four key ways of measuring energy. These metrics capture the transformations and losses that occur across the energy chain. The differences between the first stage (‘primary energy’) and the last (‘useful energy’) can be very large. This means it’s important to be clear about which metric is being referred to when people speak about data on “energy”. In this post I explain these four metrics.

We develop roadmaps to transform the all-purpose energy infrastructures (electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, industry, agriculture/forestry/fishing) of 139 countries to ones powered by wind, water, and sunlight (WWS). The roadmaps envision 80% conversion by 2030 and 100% by 2050. WWS not only replaces business-as-usual (BAU) power, but also reduces it ∼42.5% because the work: energy ratio of WWS electricity exceeds that of combustion (23.0%), WWS requires no mining, transporting, or processing of fuels (12.6%), and WWS end-use efficiency is assumed to exceed that of BAU (6.9%). Converting may create ∼24.3 million more permanent, full-time jobs than jobs lost. It may avoid ∼4.6 million/year premature air-pollution deaths today and ∼3.5 million/year in 2050; ∼$22.8 trillion/year (12.7 ¢/kWh-BAU-all-energy) in 2050 air-pollution costs; and ∼$28.5 trillion/year (15.8 ¢/kWh-BAU-all-energy) in 2050 climate costs. Transitioning should also stabilize energy prices because fuel costs are zero, reduce power d

The only publication for climate action, covering the environment, biodiversity, net zero, renewable energy and regenerative approaches. It’s time for The New Climate.

Trump could reverse the nation’s progress on climate change, but rolling back the Biden administration’s significant climate successes could be a low, slow and difficult process...

The results of one election can’t stop the momentum of the energy transition. But they can do a lot of damage.

A Trump presidency can delay, but not stop, the global transition to renewable energy, but it may more effectively stymie progress than during his first term.

World Energy Outlook 2024 - Analysis and key findings. A report by the International Energy Agency.

UN says a global ‘backlash’ against climate action is being stoked by fossil fuel companies

Under current emission trajectories, temporarily overshooting the Paris global warming limit of 1.5 °C is a distinct possibility. Permanently exceeding this limit would substantially increase the probability of triggering climate tipping elements. Here, we investigate the tipping risks associated with several policy-relevant future emission scenarios, using a stylised Earth system model of four interconnected climate tipping elements.

A new study finds that the mining and processing of the metal critical to EV batteries and renewable energy storage projects depletes and contaminates surface water, often in already vulnerable communities.

This essay takes up and extends an analysis of the ambitions of the energy transition presented during the conference entitled “L’erreur fondamentale de la transition”, held in Lausanne in December 2022, at the annual Switzerland ShiftersDay. The intervention questioned the conceptualization of energy transition, given possible inaccuracies, or errors in the categorization of reality. It is not certain that the energy contained in the wind, solar radiation, or atoms is equivalent to hydrocarbon energy for human societalneeds. Although all energies are theoretically convertible into one another, the assumption that any type of energy can always be replaced by another is likely to prove false. An energy transition based on the substitution of energies would then be inconceivable.

Foundational innovation in cloud technology and artificial intelligence will require more energy than ever before—shattering any illusion that we will restrict supplies.

Sharp declines in critical mineral prices mask risks of future supply strains as energy transitions advance - News from the International Energy Agency