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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 woman prepares to set up a solar panel to charge her cellphone at a vegetable market in Harare, Zimbabwe, October 2, 2024.REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo

    A woman prepares to set up a solar panel to charge her cellphone at a vegetable market in Harare, Zimbabwe, October 2, 2024.REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo

    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?

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      As fires burn and temperatures soar, it’s time to imagine a world beyond GDP

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      Steven Stone is acting director of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Office of Science

      In 1934, American economist Simon Kuznets presented a paper to Congress advocating for a new way of measuring economic performance.

      The United States was reeling from the Great Depression, and Kuznets – a future Novel prize winner – wanted to gauge just how badly the country’s economy had been dented.

      His metric, which would come to be known as gross domestic product (GDP), was a breakthrough. But as pioneering as it was, Kuznets saw its limitations.

      “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income,” he wrote in the 1934 paper.

      Some nine decades on, we have largely forgotten that message. GDP has become a barometer of economic progress, a kind of one-number-that-rules-them-all upon which national policies turn and governments rise and fall.

      With the climate crisis deepening by the day – as evidenced by the heatwaves and wildfires now searing Europe – our attachment to GDP is looking like a problem.

      In a single-minded pursuit of GDP growth, humanity is inadvertently feeding several environmental crises that, over the long run, threaten to make most of us poorer, sicker and more miserable. Climate change alone could slice 20 per cent off global GDP by 2100 – a staggering number.

      Clear-cutting boosts GDP not wealth

      We need to broaden our vision and definition of economic success before it’s too late.

      I grew up in the 1970s and 80s surrounded by the mixed hardwood forests of the northeastern United States. For me, the trees were a refuge, a place to run, discover and savor the history and mystery of the land and its people.

      Those experiences with my friends were more important than the amount of money in my pocket. And they led to a realization early on in my career as an economist: that wealth is about more than just income.

      This is one of GDP’s most significant oversights.

      With every forest we clear cut and every ounce of fossil fuel we burn, GDP rises. But through those actions, we are whittling away at the natural world, which supplies us with food, water, medicine, clean air and countless other essentials.

        By focusing only on GDP, we’re ignoring what’s happening to the natural assets on which our prosperity ultimately depends. It’s like we’re driving a car and only looking at the speedometer, not the energy remaining in the battery.

        That is the difference between measuring income versus measuring wealth.

        The answer to this dilemma lies in looking beyond GDP. We must start considering a broader range of indicators when making policy decisions.

        From an environmental perspective, that means measuring and valuing natural assets like forests, water, soil, biodiversity and clean air. By assigning a value to nature, decision-makers can better understand the economic consequences of, say, strip-mining a mountain top or letting plastic waste overwhelm a river.

        There is still some debate over how exactly to do this kind of natural capital accounting. But that’s not a reason to dismiss it, as many have done. It took years of refinement to end up with the GDP formula we have today.

        Costa Rica’s example

        The idea of looking beyond GDP isn’t only a theoretical debate. Countries and communities around the world have started to make economic decisions based on their natural assets. A prime example is Costa Rica, a biodiversity hotspot where a years-long effort to conserve land and seascapes has led to a boom in tourism. That in part helped elevate the country into the club of high-income nations.

        This kind of environmentally focused economic decision making can pay huge dividends. By stabilizing the climate, ending pollution and halting the loss of the natural world, humanity could save millions of lives a year and create US$20 trillion in economic benefits annually by 2070, found the Global Environment Outlook 7, a 2025 report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The report was funded by the European Union among others.

        I began my career as an economist before moving to UNEP, which focuses on solving the world’s thorniest environmental problems. During that time, I’ve come to appreciate that “wealth” means more than simply “income.” True prosperity means being able to provide for ourselves now and into the future. Anything short of that is an empty kind of affluence – and ultimately doomed to be short-lived.

        As deadly heat blankets our cities, species slip into extinction and the planet struggles with rising toxicity and pollution, I am convinced that we can do better at measuring what matters. And that means updating and expanding how we measure economic progress.

        The post As fires burn and temperatures soar, it’s time to imagine a world beyond GDP appeared first on Climate Home News.

        As fires burn and temperatures soar, it’s time to imagine a world beyond GDP

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        Climate Change

        When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño

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        Amira Odeh Quiñones is a hydrologist and Caribbean organiser for the 350.org climate campaign group

        El Niño, likely to be one of the strongest in modern history, has arrived on Caribbean shores.

        Drought is slowly creeping up on our islands. But unlike the fiery wildfires ravaging parts of Europe, there’s no smoke signalling the damage being done, no sirens to warn of the danger. Only announcements from public health officials to stay indoors and remain hydrated — as if outdoor workers and farming communities have the luxury to heed such advice.

        During El Niño, strong atmospheric winds alter rain patterns and trap heat across the Caribbean. But while we have experienced El Niño many times before, it has become very visible in recent years how climate change is making this natural phenomenon worse.

        Across the Greater Antilles, temperatures are soaring past 38°C (100°F), with real-feel indexes reaching a gruelling 43°C in parts of Puerto Rico where I live. Cuba has it worse. Widespread power outages mean that methods for cooling down are unavailable for most of the day, leaving millions of vulnerable people at risk of heat stroke when temperatures hit 38°C.

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        During the last strong drought a decade ago, I had water only two days a week in my home. Today, there are many families whose taps are about to run completely dry. Water authorities have already begun strict rationing in some municipalities, with more on the list scheduled for rationing if conditions don’t change.

        Water rationing is far more than an inconvenience; it is an immediate health risk. This means thousands of people need to constantly haul heavy buckets up flights of stairs just so they could bathe, cook, stay hydrated – the basics of survival.

        Heat causes health problems

        Puerto Rico is home to roughly 300,000 elderly residents. Many live alone, isolated and without support. They risk severe physical injury when carrying heavy water containers, and are wont to suffer from silent heat exhaustion in unventilated rooms.

        Furthermore, when water shortages force residents to store water in open household containers, it inadvertently creates breeding grounds for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Paired with scorching temperatures that tend to shorten the mosquito breeding cycle, the region is facing explosive outbreaks of dengue fever that endanger our most vulnerable: children and the elderly.

        The economic fallout is equally devastating. Dry fields mean millions of dollars in lost crops, forcing small agricultural businesses to collapse, needing urgent government relief to survive. Extreme fuel shortages have already paralyzed Cuba’s agricultural sector, cutting food output by 60% – the El Niño dry spell threatens to decimate it.

        At sea, warmer ocean waters fuel massive influxes of sargassum seaweed. Rotting sargassum chokes our beaches, destroying the local tourism industry that so many working families rely on. Tangled seaweed also damages nets and boat engines, slashing fish catches and driving up equipment costs for local fishers.

        In the south of Puerto Rico, the coastal town of La Parguera is currently witnessing a historic amount of sargassum on its shores. This has halted most of the boating activity in the area, which is the seaside town’s main tourist draw and economic driver.

        All over the Caribbean, from town halls to local group gatherings, the story I hear is always the same: constant headaches, lost work hours, failing health, and a sense that quality of life is silently being stolen. The compounding effects of heatwaves, drought, and marine destruction are exhausting our people, our islands.

        Climate change to blame

        Climate change makes each El Niño year hotter and more damaging. Higher baseline global temperatures increase the energy and moisture available for extreme weather. Latest projections show that El Niño may push the monthly global average temperature past 2°C of warming for the first time in early 2027. In the Caribbean islands, that will not just be breaking records – it’ll be breaking lives.

        Recently, I had the opportunity to share a panel with climate scientists behind what is known as the field of “attribution science” – or the science that compares today’s climate conditions to what the Earth’s climate would be like without human activity, particularly burning fossil fuels. They’re unequivocal: it’s no longer a question of whether extreme weather is caused by climate change, it’s just a question of how much.

          Attribution science recently got a boost from the U.S.’ top scientific advisory body. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recognized that researchers’ methods have advanced considerably in recent years, resulting in better assessments on how much extreme weather can be attributed to human-caused climate change. It noted that attribution findings could be relevant in some types of legal cases, including those seeking damages from oil companies for climate impacts.

          This crisis, which is already taking a heavy toll on our communities’ survival, needs real, urgent, and structural action that goes beyond aid. With similar droughts now gripping parts of Asia and Africa, we’re falling into the familiar narrative of treating the looming humanitarian crisis as if no one was to blame, as if it is being caused solely by a natural phenomenon we can’t control.

          It’s not. The world was already on fire before its regular visitor, El Niño, came. While we need humanitarian action, we need climate action too, in order to permanently put out the flames.

          The post When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño appeared first on Climate Home News.

          When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño

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          Climate Change

          Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change?

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          China has released a five-year plan dedicated to addressing climate change.

          The 15th five-year plan for a national response to climate change is the latest in a series to outline in-depth climate and energy targets for the 2026-2030 period.

          These include five-year plans for “building a Beautiful China”, developing a “new-type energy system” and developing renewable energy.

          There are also separate “action plans” for the 2026-2030 period, such as for peaking carbon emissions

          China has pledged to peak its emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.

          The new plan does not include any major new targets, instead consolidating and reaffirming existing policies.

          Nevertheless, it includes significant signals on key policy areas, such as non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, global climate governance and carbon markets.

          Below, Carbon Brief examines some of the notable elements in the latest five-year plan and what it reveals about China’s policy direction through to 2030.

          What does the climate plan cover?

          The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) released the plan in late July, in unison with 18 other government departments. These include the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration.

          The document covers a range of topics, including CO2 emissions, other greenhouse gases (non-CO2 GHGs), carbon markets, carbon footprints, climate adaptation and international cooperation on climate change.

          For the first time at the five-year plan level, the plan creates a comprehensive target system covering all areas of climate policy, say officials in a MEE Q&A.

          They describe it as “the main policy instrument” for advancing China’s climate action during 2026-2030.

          China rarely issues high-level multi-year policies dedicated to “responding to climate change”. In 2014, the NDRC published a plan on the topic running through to 2020, but this was not linked to a five-year plan period.

          Qin Yan, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, tells Carbon Brief that the plan shows that China’s climate governance has reached “an unprecedented strategic level”.

          She adds that the plan creates an “all-encompassing target system” to support China’s Paris Agreement climate pledges for 2030 and 2035.

          In its 2030 pledge, China aimed to peak emissions “before 2030” and reduce carbon intensity – its emissions per unit of GDP – by more than 65% from 2005 levels.

          Last year, president Xi Jinping personally announced China’s 2035 pledge to cut China’s greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035, while “striving to do better”.

          The five-year plan marks a new phase in China’s climate policy, according to researchers at CIB Research, an economic research body affiliated with the Industrial Bank, whose largest shareholder is the Fujian provincial government.

          Their analysis adds that the plan represents a broad effort to strengthen China’s climate-governance system, implementation mechanisms and underlying capacity.

          Nevertheless, several headline targets and policies in the document simply reiterate already established plans.

          These include:

          • Cutting carbon intensity by 17% across the five years
          • Reducing carbon intensity per product in industries under China’s carbon market by 3%
          • Substituting fossil fuels with renewables
          • Strengthening climate adaptation
          • Supporting the “free flow” of cleantech

          What does the plan say about non-CO2 GHGs?

          The plan also goes into detail on China’s approach to non-CO2 GHGs. This includes reaffirming a target of an emissions “reduction capacity” from these gases totalling 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) by 2030, although the baseline is unclear.

          The target previously appeared in the overarching five-year plan, as well as the plan for building a “Beautiful China”.

          The goal refers to emissions reductions, which can be realised through implementing current non-CO2 emissions reduction policies and projects, says Chen Meian, programme director and senior analyst at the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP). 

          She adds that it is “relatively achievable”, with sources including increasing the number of coal-mine methane utilisation projects.

          She points to an MEE explanatory note for a draft methodology under the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) scheme, China’s voluntary carbon-credit market. Chen says the note suggests that projects using ventilation air methane and coal-mine methane with concentrations below 8% alone could deliver around 20MtCO2e of reduction by 2030.

          The note states that, currently, such projects are estimated to be able to “generate annual emission reductions of approximately 4.5MtCO2e”.

          In addition, Chen says, measures targeting industrial nitrous oxide (N2O) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) could help make up the remainder needed to meet the target.

          According to iGDP analysis of biennial reports submitted by China to the UNFCCC, China emitted around 14,000MtCO2e of GHGs in 2021, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).

          Non-CO2 GHGs accounted for around 2,700MtCO2e, or 19%, of the total, the majority of which was methane, as shown in the figure below.

          Methane is China’s main source of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions by gas, MtCO2e. Stacked bar chart from 2005 to 2021 showing total emissions rising to over 2,700 MtCO2e. Methane consistently accounts for the largest share, followed by Nitrous Oxide and F-gases. Source: iGDP analysis of China’s first Biennial Transparency Report and fourth Biennial Update Report - (alt text generated by Google Gemini)
          iGDP analysis of China’s first Biennial Transparency Report and fourth Biennial Update Report.

          China’s plans to curb these super-pollutants in the five-year period include coal-mine methane utilisation projects, end-of-pipe destruction technologies for HFCs and guidance on the use of catalysts to reduce N2O emissions.

          The plan also calls for the recovery and replacement of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) in power equipment.

          For Chen, the plan’s focus on SF6 control is particularly noteworthy. She says the gas is “finally receiving policy attention” and that proactive action is “timely and will help avoid future emissions growth” as China’s power system expands.

          What does the plan say about global climate governance?

          One of the plan’s clearest objectives for international cooperation is for China to play a more active role in global climate governance.

          By 2030, it says China should markedly increase its “influence, guiding power, shaping power and moral appeal” in this area.

          It says China’s climate action could also feed into the Global Governance Initiative, a policy initiative aimed at reforming the global governance system.

          China will also aim to “build a new narrative on climate governance”, it adds.

          Prof Thomas Hale, a professor in public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, writes on LinkedIn that the plan “marks a major rhetorical shift” towards China being increasingly willing to “lead and shape” global climate action.

          Another clear focal point for international cooperation is in carbon markets.

          The plan calls for China to expand the global influence of its carbon market, such as through international rule-setting, cooperation on standards and by hosting the China Carbon Market Conference.

          Qin says China’s more active role in global carbon pricing is already evident in the launch of the open coalition on compliance carbon markets with the EU and Brazil. This coalition is expected to adopt a work plan at the China Carbon Market Conference in September.

          Qin also notes that China “could become the world’s largest [carbon] offset buyer” as its energy transition progresses.

          The country would, therefore, “benefit from helping shape global rules under the Article 6 framework [for carbon trading under the Paris Agreement]”, she adds.

          The post Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

          Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change?
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