In January, China announced an end to export subsidies for solar panels and a phased end to value-added tax rebates on batteries. The cuts, which took effect on April 1, have raised concerns for renewable energy markets globally, including African countries, which rely heavily on Chinese imports.
With solar increasingly becoming a reliable power source across the African continent, it has seen a boom in imports of related technology, mostly from China. The first decisive evidence of a solar take-off in Africa was recorded in 2025 when imports of solar panels from China to Africa rose sharply over 12 months, adding 60% more potential electricity generation capacity than in the previous year.
Energy think-tank Ember found that the growth was led by countries that have suffered widespread power cuts like South Africa, Nigeria and Zambia, where solar panels are increasingly appealing to businesses and households seeking reliable power without having to use expensive fossil fuel generators.
But experts fear this explosive growth could be affected by the cut in tax rebates for clean technology from China – and because of the Iran war, the prices of these technologies could rise even higher, making the transition unaffordable for many Africans.
Climate Home News spoke to Karl Boyce, Chief Executive Officer of ARC Power, a renewable energy developer that works in Africa, about what these subsidy cuts could mean for the continent, how it can prepare for price and demand shocks, and what must be done to bridge Africa’s energy access gap.
Q: How will the recent export subsidy cuts by China affect the growth of clean energy usage in Africa where it’s increasingly becoming a reliable source of power for communities?
A: China’s removal of the export subsidy will certainly impact this sector in Africa, but probably not as extensively as we might first think. Solar pricing has dropped significantly in recent years, so this might just level it out to a more realistic and stable price in the longer term.
A product shortage in the near term could be a possibility, as rushed procurement might occur to secure products ahead of the next phased rebate drop in 2027. In parallel, we have already seen shipping pricing increasing from some of our recent orders, due to the war in the Middle East.
Regarding battery storage, various potential manufacturing opportunities are being explored, but these are still nascent, despite Africa having significant amounts of the critical minerals needed for battery manufacturing.
African leaders seek investments in ailing grid infrastructure to achieve energy goals
Q: About 600 million people still lack access to electricity in Africa. What are some of the barriers to bridging this gap?
A: One reason is a lack of access to funding at scale across the sector. Another is that regulations in some African countries are still evolving and changing, which makes the process slow.
With mini-grids, it’s quite challenging because most of the connections in a community will be households who are probably paying [about] $3 a month for their power, which makes it really difficult for developers or investors to actually get their money back. It might take 10 years.


A lot of funding has gone into these solar home systems, which is great just to give people lights for the first time. But we’ve seen with all the communities where we’re working that people want more than that. They want to be able to set up their business, and they don’t just want to be able to charge their phone and have a few lights – they actually want the ability to have appliances and things like that.
I think the risk appetite for investments in solar mini-grids seems to be changing, hopefully for the better. Also we seem to be seeing more and more investors focusing on impact as well, which is so nice and so positive to see.
Q: We’re less than four years away from the deadline for the UN’s universal energy access target and the gap is still far from being bridged in Africa. Can the continent meet the 2030 target and how are initiatives like Mission 300 helping?
A: Last year at an event in Kenya, the secretary-general of Sustainable Energy for All, Damilola Ogunbiyi, was talking about the fact that the last few years were the first time energy access was actually reduced because it hasn’t kept up with population growth.
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But, while I would confidently say that we’re not going to achieve the Mission 300 target of connecting 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa to electricity by 2030, I think they’ll go a long way towards it.
Even though there are only about three-and-a-half years left, with the funding that’s being focused on it, I think the World Bank seems to have made it kind of a priority now [through Mission 300]. I am hoping that there will be a big step towards it. Even if they achieve half of their target, that would be such a significant step forward.
To go further towards achieving the 2030 target, there has to be a really big push on improving regulations in the countries so they become less bureaucratic. It just speeds up the process, because that’s the thing we have seen firsthand, where even if you have funding and you have the ability to do it, things are still being slowed down by regulations.
It’s hard because you’ve got so many different countries with totally different kinds of business environments and business cultures, different regulations. This is the challenge. Obviously there’s not going to be one thing that just fixes everything across the continent.
Also, I think that the approach to funding definitely has to change. We need more concessional funding to support other funding to come in, to de-risk it slightly. Access to capital has been one of the biggest barriers. And it always frustrates me, because they always say there’s so much capital out there, but not enough good projects. But when you speak to any developer, they’re always saying the same thing: it’s just trying to access capital.
Q: ARC Power operates a model called FUSE and, with support from the World Bank under the Mission 300 initiative, you are helping fund energy access in some African countries. How are models like yours helping to move the needle in areas that lack access?
A: We were building mini-grids in Rwanda and the government changed their strategy and decided they wanted everyone connected to the national electricity grid, which is obviously very ambitious. But they basically said, we don’t want any more mini-grids in Rwanda.
Some other developers left and pulled out of the market – and it forced us to rethink how we work, and this is where we developed the FUSE model. It’s a public-private collaboration with the utility company and the government, but we’re bringing in private investment to build out their energy infrastructure.
So we’ll sign a FUSE agreement with the utility company. We will then finance, design and construct grid expansion, so this is still first-time energy access, it can still be real rural areas, but we will basically build out an extension to the national grid. We put in solar, we’ll see what’s connected and how to connect everyone.
Our strapline as a company is “to power” and we are very clear with the utility companies and governments that when we go into an area we want to connect everyone. We’ll connect everyone and then once it’s all constructed and built, and the utility company has ensured it’s to their standards and they sign off, then they pay us over, say, 10 years.
What this is allowing us to do is really accelerate energy access. So, for each dollar invested, we can probably do five times as many connections as we would have been able to do if we were building just a mini-grid, just because we get our capital back quicker.
It’s also good for households because one of the challenges you have is often that you might have a utility company and a mini-grid developer almost competing for a site.
The other thing is the tariffs. You have to have this kind of cost-reflective tariff as a mini-grid operator to get your money back, which means it could be five times the price of the national grid tariff. In Rwanda, we saw houses connected to the national grid probably 500 metres away from a house that’s connected to a mini-grid and the house connected to the mini-grid is paying five times the price.
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Q: Which would serve Africa better – is it mini-grids, utility-scale renewables that can be fed into the grid, or smaller-scale rooftop installations that serve households?
A: In Rwanda, the FUSE model definitely works. Because it’s a small country, nowhere is more than probably a few kilometres from the grid. In some of the larger countries like Mozambique – which is a great example where we’re operating – I think there will always be a requirement for mini-grids, but they complement each other.
In places where you’ve got the national grid infrastructure and it’s growing slowly, we would go to the utility company and say: “You obviously have your plan of where you would like to expand the grid, and all of these tens of thousands of houses that you’d like to connect – let us do it, and we will bring in funding from the private sector”, and then it makes it much more affordable and we can accelerate it.
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West Africa is absolutely on our radar, it’s where we will be definitely targeting. At the moment we are in Rwanda, Mozambique and Zambia, we’re targeting another eight countries in East and Southern Africa in the next six months, and then our plan is to go and start pitching to West African countries.
The World Bank and its International Finance Corporation arm have clearly said to us that they’ve seen the FUSE model can be one of the key solutions in this Mission 300 because it’s so scalable.
This interview was shortened and edited for clarity.
The post Q&A: Will subsidy cuts for Chinese clean-tech exports hurt Africa’s solar boom? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Q&A: Will subsidy cuts for Chinese clean-tech exports hurt Africa’s solar boom?
Climate Change
‘Concerning’ low sea ice persists as Antarctic hits third-lowest winter peak
Antarctic sea ice has recorded its third-smallest winter peak extent since satellite records began 48 years ago, new data reveals.
Provisional data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that Antarctic sea ice hit its annual winter peak on 14 September, with an extent of 17.59m square kilometres (km2).
The organisation notes that the data is still preliminary, adding that “large fluctuations in extent are typical of Antarctic sea ice near the seasonal maximum”.
One expert tells Carbon Brief that it is “concerning to see these low values persisting”, but says that scientists need more time to determine whether this represents a “structural shift” in Antarctic sea ice extent.
Meanwhile, at the Earth’s other pole, Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum on 12 September, ranking as the joint-10th lowest in the satellite record.
The NSIDC notes that the last 20 years have seen the lowest 20 Arctic sea ice extents in the satellite record.
Antarctic peak
Dr Lettie Roach, a polar climate scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, tells Carbon Brief that this year’s Antarctic sea ice maximum was “well below average for the season”. She warns that, “after several decades of stable or increasing winter Antarctic sea ice conditions, it is concerning to see these low values persisting”.
She adds:
“Compared with the Arctic, it’s less clear how recent changes in Antarctic sea ice are attributable to human-caused warming vs natural variability. We need more years of observations to better understand whether this is truly a structural shift.”
Dr Clare Eayrs, a postdoctoral researcher at the Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI), tells Carbon Brief that, since recording a “near-average February minimum” extent, Antarctic sea ice has “returned to unusually low winter coverage”.
She notes that Antarctic sea ice extent in July and August this year were the fifth and fourth lowest on record, respectively, adding that “all five of the lowest July extents have occurred since 2022 and all four of the lowest August extents since 2023”.
The chart below shows Antarctic sea ice extent in 2025 (dark blue) and 2026 (red) so far. For comparison, the chart shows decadal averages (dotted lines) as well as 2023 (mid blue), the year of the smallest winter sea-ice maximum on record.

Eayrs tells Carbon Brief that the regional pattern of Antarctic sea ice cover “changed substantially during the growth season”.
For example, she says that “in April, the Bellingshausen Sea remained almost entirely ice-free, while the neighbouring Amundsen Sea had more ice than usual”.
However, by late August, changes in atmospheric pressure and wind meant that “the Bellingshausen deficit had largely recovered, while ice was unusually scarce in the Amundsen Sea and across much of East Antarctica”.

Arctic minimum
Meanwhile, the Arctic recorded its minimum summer sea ice extent on 12 September. At 4.60m km2, this year ties with 2025, 2010 and 2008 as the 10th-lowest sea ice extent on record.
The chart below shows Arctic sea ice extent in 2025 (dark blue) and 2026 (red) so far. For comparison, the chart shows decadal averages (dotted lines) as well as 2012 (mid blue), the year of the smallest summer sea-ice minimum on record.

Roach tells Carbon Brief that although this minimum is not “record setting”, it is still “lower than any sea ice minimum before 2007”. She adds:
“Human-caused climate change has reduced Arctic sea ice cover and thickness, so the region is fundamentally different compared to a few decades ago.”
Scientists have been tracking Arctic sea ice thickness using a reanalysis produced called the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) since 1979.
In March 2026, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) terminated a global dataset of air pressure that scientists relied upon to produce PIOMAS, forcing both datasets to stop publishing updates.
The PIOMAS website says it will take “considerable effort and time” to find alternative data to use in their reanalysis. It adds that “we don’t yet have a good sense if that’s possible with available funds and if so, when we will be able to resume production of a new PIOMAS timeseries”.
Roach also notes that August saw record-breaking heat sweep across much of the world, explaining that high temperatures “extended into Arctic coastal regions, close to regions with substantial sea ice loss – particularly the Barents-Kara and East Siberian seas”.
Dr Zack Labe, a scientist at Climate Central, tells Carbon Brief that the absence of a new record does not mean that ice cover is becoming more “resilient”. He says:
“Local weather patterns across the Arctic play a really important role in year-to-year sea-ice extent, even as the long-term trend is clearly downward.”
Labe tells Carbon Brief that weather in the Arctic this summer was “influenced mainly by lower pressure toward the central Arctic, which brought cloudier and cooler conditions that limited surface melt and delayed the start of the melt season”.
He explains that this “was most obvious across parts of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, where the melt season didn’t really kick off until after early July, which was more than two weeks later than normal”.
In contrast, he says, the Atlantic side of the Arctic “had a much more extreme summer”, with sea ice in the Barents Sea recording its “earliest melt-out on record”.
This was partly due to “unusually warm air and ocean temperatures”, Labe says. He notes, for example, that parts of western Siberia saw unusually persistent temperatures more than 5C above the 1981-2010 average for much of the summer, which extended out over the Kara Sea and contributed to substantial ice melt in this area”.

Labe tells Carbon Brief that, going forward, scientists need “more data and observations of other sea-ice metrics, like ice thickness, which may give us better insight into the overall condition of the ice pack, especially during years like 2026 when it is very fragmented”.
(In March 2026, Arctic sea ice reached its peak extent for this winter, clocking in as the joint-smallest in a satellite record going back almost half a century.)
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The post ‘Concerning’ low sea ice persists as Antarctic hits third-lowest winter peak appeared first on Carbon Brief.
‘Concerning’ low sea ice persists as Antarctic hits third-lowest winter peak
Climate Change
COP31 attendees told not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs”
Participants at COP31 in Antalya will have a “duty” not to interfere in Türkiye’s internal affairs under the country’s hosting deal with the UN, reviving a clause dropped for last year’s climate summit in Brazil that human rights groups warn could put activists at risk.
Türkiye has faced growing criticism from human rights groups over the jailing of opposition figures, journalists and activists and imposed a blanket protest ban around July’s summit of the NATO military alliance in Ankara.
The contested provision is included in the binding agreement between the UN climate secretariat and the Turkish government that sets out responsibilities over logistical arrangements and details participants’ rights and obligations.
The document, signed in June but only made public on Wednesday, gives accredited COP31 attendees immunity from legal action over what they say, write or do in connection with the conference. Climate Home News understands that this safeguard can be applied to what takes place both inside and, in certain circumstances, outside of the UN-controlled COP “Blue Zone”. For the first time, this protection explicitly continues after the summit ends.

But participants enjoying these “privileges and immunities” also have a duty to respect Türkiye’s laws and regulations and not to interfere in its internal affairs, the agreement states. Rights groups fear its wide-ranging formulation could be used to discourage criticism of the host government.
Climate Home News understands that whether an action is covered by the immunity or infringes on the host’s internal affairs would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, with close coordination between the country’s authorities and the UN climate change body.
A separate provision states that immunity shall be waived where the UN believes it would “impede the course of justice”.
‘Chilling effect’
Those same provisions featured in the host country agreements for COP28 in the United Arab Emirates and COP29 in Azerbaijan, both regarded as authoritarian regimes, before being dropped for COP30 in Brazil.
Ann Harrison, climate justice policy advisor at Amnesty International, said it is “extremely disappointing” that the COP31 agreement re-introduced clauses that could “hinder the ability of human rights defenders and civil society organisations to conduct their work safely”.
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She added the provisions could have a “wider chilling effect” on rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, given concerns over the human rights situation in Türkiye, including laws that “have shrunk civic space” and their “abusive” implementation by authorities.
The UN climate change body declined to comment.
Rights groups have documented blanket protest bans, unlawful use of force by the police and prosecutions of journalists, human rights defenders and lawyers across Türkiye in the last year.
Arrests and protest bans
Last July, environmental activist Esra Işık was sentenced to more than two years for “resisting” a public official over what Amnesty International described as a peaceful protest against an urgent expropriation order linked to the expansion of coal mining in south-western Türkiye. She is appealing the conviction.
Ahead of a summit of the NATO alliance in the capital Ankara in July, authorities put in place a 13-day blanket ban on demonstrations, citing “national security”, and arrested over 200 people. Human Rights Watch said the crackdown showed Türkiye’s “ruthless intolerance of freedom of speech and assembly”.
Earlier this month, Turkish police detained dozens of people as part of what rights groups described as the government’s widening crackdown on LGBTQ+ activists and venues.
Questioned by media as to how he would guarantee the right to protest at COP31, Kurum said earlier in September that his team would “try to meet” any request they receive from civil society and give them “a free space to express themselves”.
“Don’t worry, thinking you will not be able to voice your opinions or really share your thoughts,” he said in an attempt to reassure campaigners, adding that he had put former deputy environment minister Mehmet Birpinar in charge of liaising with civil society.
Civic space needed
Camilla Pollera, human rights and climate change campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said meaningful participation at COP31 is fundamental to the legitimacy of climate action.
“At a climate summit, civil society participation necessarily includes being present, speaking out, scrutinising governments’ decisions and climate policies, and advocating for communities most vulnerable to climate change,” she added.

At last year’s COP30 summit, thousands of Indigenous people and climate activists peacefully marched through the Amazonian city of Belém in the first major demonstration outside the UN venue in four years. Smaller-scale demonstrations were largely confined to the “Blue Zone” at COP27 in Egypt, COP28 in the UAE and COP29 in Azerbaijan.
In two other separate incidents in Belém, members of the Munduruku tribe blocked access to the conference centre for hours, demanding an end to development projects in their ancestral land, and protesters stormed through the venue clashing with UN security officials.
The COP31 hosting agreement keeps some of the safeguards previously hailed by civil society groups. The government and the UN secretariat commit to upholding “the fundamental human rights” of all participants in the agreement’s preamble.
Under the deal, Türkiye also needs to ensure that security personnel follow “the highest ethical and professional standards and are expected to behave with integrity and respect”.
The post COP31 attendees told not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs” appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP31 attendees told not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs”
Climate Change
Threatened by rising seas, small islands secure right to keep their statehood
As rising seas submerge growing swathes of land, countries that lose territory should still keep their national boundaries, sovereign rights and UN membership, according to a political declaration adopted at the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday.
The declaration, which was championed by climate-vulnerable small island states, affirms “the presumption in favour of continued statehood” in the face of sea level rise fuelled by climate change, and urges countries to work together to assist communities affected by encroaching oceans.
Speaking at a high-level UN meeting to address the existential threats posed by sea level rise, Cabo Verde’s Prime Minister Francisco Carvalho, one of the initiative’s co-facilitators along with Australia, said the adoption of the text by consensus sends “a message of hope”.
“This declaration has a very special meaning. For us, sea level rise is neither a distant threat nor a theoretical concern,” he said, adding that rising seas put at risk key infrastructure, water resources and economic growth in small island states.
In the Pacific, sea levels have risen at twice the global rate, dramatically increasing coastal flooding events from two to 20 a year in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and from zero to 102 events per year in American Samoa, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Surangel Whipps Jr., president of the Pacific island of Palau, said the summit in New York represents a “moment of international solidarity”, and highlighted that small island states will remain permanent members of the UN.
Declaration recognises statehood
An advisory opinion by the world’s top maritime court, the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), first upheld in 2024 that countries do not have to shrink their maritime borders even if they lose land territory due to sea level rise. This was reiterated by the International Court of Justice in last year’s landmark ruling on the climate obligations of states.
The new declaration endorsed by all governments at the UN General Assembly stresses that sea level rise “is not a distant scenario but a real and lived experience for many”, and notes that international law must be implemented in global responses to rising seas.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the “milestone must now be translated into action”, adding that the declaration should encourage an “ongoing dialogue” at the “highest possible level” leading to practical outcomes. Pacific islands have proposed an international treaty on sea level rise that would provide more legal certainty.
“Those on the frontlines must be front and centre on every decision. We cannot allow countries and cultures to vanish beneath the waves,” he said. “The SOS has gone out. The world must answer.”
At regional summit, Pacific islands ask for COP31 support for clean energy and finance
Goodwin Friday, prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said measures to protect vulnerable states will require adequate finance. “Investing in resilience now is more cost-effective than paying the far greater price for loss and damage later,” he added.
Championed by Australia’s COP31 co-presidency, Pacific islands have sought to put adaptation to sea level rise and ocean conservation at the top of the political agenda by inviting world leaders to attend the pre-COP31 summit co-hosted by Fiji and Tuvalu in October.
Tuvalu will also host the second global fossil fuel phase-out summit in April 2027, after around 60 governments met this year in Santa Marta, Colombia, to discuss ending their dependence on coal, oil and gas.
“Our coastlines, our reefs and our communities are living with the consequences of fossil fuel dependence every day, and our people have earned the right to help shape the way forward,” Lynda Tabuya, Fiji’s climate minister, said in a statement announcing details of the conference.

Ocean monitoring gets a boost in New York
Amid record-breaking marine heat and seas rising at unprecedented speed, governments in New York announced new commitments to protect the world’s ocean, as efforts to bolster marine ecosystems and coastal communities rise up the political agenda.
On Wednesday, the EU and Canada announced more funding for a new Europe-led ocean monitoring system called OceanEye, launched in the aftermath of a failed attempt by the Trump administration to dismantle the largest existing network of deep-sea observatories.
During an event at UN headquarters in New York, EU President Ursula von der Leyen and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced around $163 million in new funding for the initiative, with the EU pledging €92 million ($105m) on top of existing seed funding and Canada pledging C$82 million (US$58m) over five years.
According to an EU statement, while OceanEye will collaborate with the Global Ocean Observing System, that network “remains vulnerable to financial shortfalls and geopolitical disruptions”. A group of 30 countries from Europe, Africa and the Americas joined an international initiative in support of OceanEye, including large coastal nations like Brazil, Namibia and Mexico.
Von der Leyen said OceanEye “can make us the leading ocean data provider in a matter of years”, including by launching new satellites and installing new observatories in the deep ocean. “From outer space to the deepest ocean, our funding helps us keep watch beneath the waves,” she added.
Carney said the initiative would help protect Canada’s Arctic region with real-time monitoring operating year-round. “We can’t protect what we can’t see,” he said, also highlighting that Canada had expanded conservation of its ocean territory from 1% a decade ago to 15% now.
In New York, a group of 19 countries said they are either developing or implementing plans to sustainably manage all of their ocean territory, with 12 new nations joining the initiative. In a joint communiqué, they called on more countries to sign up ahead of COP31.
Warnings of El Niño-fuelled extreme heat
Scientists and world leaders have raised the alarm over this year’s record-breaking marine temperatures, which have persisted above historical peaks for more than 100 days as the naturally occurring El Niño phenomenon intensifies in the Pacific.
Extreme ocean heat could become a threat to coastal ecosystems and communities, experts fear. Water temperatures 1.5C above normal levels have also rapidly fuelled a strong hurricane in the Pacific in recent days.
Despite scientific calls for additional ocean conservation efforts, a report launched this week in New York warned that efforts to protect ocean ecosystems are lagging behind, with only 10% of the global ocean covered by conservation areas and just 3.5% designated as “effectively protected”.
The post Threatened by rising seas, small islands secure right to keep their statehood appeared first on Climate Home News.
Threatened by rising seas, small islands secure right to keep their statehood
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