The upcoming assessment cycle of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be authored by more experts from global south institutions than ever before, Carbon Brief analysis finds.
More than 660 scientists from 90 countries have been selected to write the three “working group” reports that will form the core of the IPCC’s seventh assessment cycle (AR7).
These three reports are scheduled to be published by 2029 and will summarise the latest research on climate change.
Carbon Brief analysis finds that a record 42% of authors of these upcoming reports are based at institutions in the global south.
Overall, the AR7 working groups will have an equal 50-50 representation of authors who are citizens of the global north and global south.
The analysis shows that the UK has the highest number of authors at 59, followed closely by the US with 55.
Furthermore, Carbon Brief finds that 46% of the report authors are listed as “female” – the second-highest percentage to date for any group of IPCC reports.
In a statement, IPCC chair Prof Jim Skea said the new author teams “reflect increased diversity, in terms of both gender balance and greater representation from developing countries and economies in transition”.
Countries
Earlier this year, Carbon Brief published an analysis of the gender and country of affiliation of the authors of all major IPCC reports, from the first assessment report in 1990 to the sixth assessment report (AR6) in 2023, including working group reports, special reports and methodology reports.
Carbon Brief has now expanded the analysis to include the authors of the AR7 working group reports, which are expected to be published by 2029.
For scientists to become IPCC authors, they must nominate themselves or be nominated by someone else to their country’s “national focal point”, which is often the country’s ministry of environment, climate change or meteorology. It is the focal point’s job to assess the applications and send a subset to the IPCC for their consideration.
The final decision on authors lies with the IPCC bureau – which consists of the chair and vice-chairs, as well as a pair of co-chairs for each working group.
The IPCC’s seventh assessment cycle will feature three working group reports:
- Working Group I (WG1): The physical science basis
- Working Group II (WG2): Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability
- Working Group III (WG3): Mitigation of climate change
Across the three working groups, Carbon Brief finds that 42% of the authors are affiliated with institutions in global south countries. This is a record high for any set of IPCC assessment reports.
The chart below shows the percentage of global south authors from every set of IPCC reports ever published.
Each IPCC assessment cycle is marked by the publication of three working group reports, which are summarised in a synthesis report. Carbon Brief has grouped these four reports under the headline “assessment reports” for every assessment cycle.
(“AR7” includes only the three working group reports, as the author list for the synthesis report has not yet been released.)
The first, second and third assessment reports are indicated by the acronyms FAR, SAR and TAR. Subsequent assessment reports are indicated by AR, followed by the name of the assessment cycle.
Most assessment cycles also saw the publication of “special reports”, focusing on specific areas of climate change, and “methodology reports” – technical documents that focus on specific areas of the IPCC’s methodology. Acronyms for these reports are given as SR and MR, respectively, followed by the name of the assessment cycle.
For example, the special reports on 1.5C, the ocean and cryosphere and climate change and land – published over 2018-19 – are part of the sixth assessment cycle and are referred to collectively as SR6.
(To assign each special and methodology report to an assessment cycle, Carbon Brief assumes that assessment reports are the last documents to be published in each assessment cycle. Carbon Brief has grouped the authors from special reports (“SR”) and methodology reports (“MR”) separately for each assessment cycle.)
Carbon Brief defines the global north as North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. It defines the global south as Asia (excluding Japan), Africa, Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand), Latin America and the Caribbean.
While the three AR7 working group reports collectively have the highest percentage of global south authors compared to other similar groupings, there are individual reports with higher percentages, such as the 2019 special report on land and 2023 synthesis report.
Carbon Brief finds that, with 59 appointed authors, the UK is the most highly represented country in the upcoming IPCC working group reports.
This is closely followed by the US with 55. Rounding off the top five are Australia, Germany and China, with 34, 32 and 29 authors each, respectively.
Comparing the number of authors in each continent shows Europe with comfortably the largest representation, at more than 200 appointed authors. At the other end of the scale, South America and Africa have the fewest authors, with around 80 and 70 authors, respectively.
Of these three reports, WG2 has the highest percentage of global south authors for the IPCC’s seventh assessment cycle, while WG1 has the lowest.
Institutions
Carbon Brief has also ranked which institutions have the largest numbers of IPCC authors. The table below shows the top 15 institutions and their country.
| Institution | Country | Number of authors |
|---|---|---|
| Imperial College London | UK | 10 |
| University of Cape Town | South Africa | 9 |
| Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research | Germany | 8 |
| National Centre for Scientific Research | France | 8 |
| CGIAR | International | 6 |
| ETH Zurich | Switzerland | 6 |
| University of Oxford | UK | 5 |
| University of Melbourne | Australia | 5 |
| International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis | Austria | 5 |
| National Institute for Environmental Studies | Japan | 5 |
| CICERO Center for International Climate Research | Norway | 5 |
| International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) | International | 4 |
| Environment and Climate Change Canada | Canada | 4 |
| Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) | Australia | 4 |
| Independent/self employed | International | 4 |
With 10 authors, the UK’s Imperial College London – where IPCC chair Jim Skea worked for almost a decade – tops the list.
It is closely followed by South Africa’s University of Cape Town, which has nine authors. After this, with eight authors apiece are the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
When Carbon Brief carried out similar analysis in 2018 for the IPCC’s sixth assessment cycle, the US led the pack with 74 out of the 721 authors and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had eight authors in total.
This year, the most highly ranked US institutions are Cornell University and Rutgers University, which list three authors each.
Only one author from NOAA was listed. This expert’s listing for “institution” specifies “until April 30, 2025 – then retired”.
This comes after disruption to the usual US federal nomination process for selecting IPCC authors.
In February, Donald Trump pulled the US out of a meeting in China to discuss the seventh IPCC assessment cycle, according to Earth.org. The outlet adds that he also ordered federal scientists at the NOAA and the US Global Change Research Program to stop work on all other IPCC climate assessment-related activities.
Citizenship and institution
IPCC authors have two countries listed next to their names – “country” and “citizenship”. For this analysis, Carbon Brief uses the former, which indicates the country where the scientist works, because citizenship data is not available in earlier reports.
However, there are dozens of experts with different countries listed under “country” and “citizenship”.
For example, 59 authors have the UK listed as their “country”, meaning that they work at institutions in the UK. However, 28 of these experts are citizens of other countries, including Kenya, Chile and Spain.
Of the 29 authors with Indian citizenship, nine are registered with institutions in other countries, including Nepal, Malaysia and the UK.
Meanwhile, 13 authors are registered with institutions in Saudi Arabia – including an employee from the oil company Saudi Aramco – but only five have citizenship there.
Carbon Brief finds that a record-high 280 experts are affiliated with institutions in the global south, making up 42% of total authors.
(While half of all authors are citizens of global south countries, citizenship information is not provided with all IPCC reports and so a full comparison throughout IPCC history is not possible.)
IPCC scientists previously told Carbon Brief that experts from the global south often find it easier to apply to join the IPCC via institutions in the global north.
Gender
The IPCC provides binary gender data for all the AR7 authors.
Carbon Brief finds that 46% of the authors of the IPCC’s seventh assessment working group reports are listed as women.
The chart below shows the gender balance of the authors of all IPCC reports ever published.
Of the three AR7 reports, WG2 has the highest proportion of authors who are women.
Just shy of 52% of the authors of the impacts, adaptation and vulnerability report are women, making it the IPCC report with the second-highest proportion of women authors, after the IPCC’s upcoming special report on cities with 53%.
Methodology
Carbon Brief downloaded authorship data on the AR7 working group reports from the IPCC website, which lists data on each author’s gender, citizenship and the country where their institution was based. Carbon Brief also obtained data from the IPCC’s technical support unit.
(The “methodology” section of Carbon Brief’s earlier 2025 and 2023 on IPCC authorship contains more details on how Carbon Brief collected authorship data from the main working group reports and recent special reports.)
Carbon Brief recognises that gender is not best categorised using a binary “male” or “female” label and appreciates that the methods used of determining author gender could result in inaccuracies. However, for the purpose of this analysis, this method was deemed suitable.
The post Analysis: IPCC’s seventh assessment has record-high representation from global south appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: IPCC’s seventh assessment has record-high representation from global south
Climate Change
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
UK, Europe and India battle heatwaves
‘MIND-BOGGLING’ MAY: The UK and continental Europe have set “mind-boggingly crazy” temperature records for May amid a deadly heatwave, reported the Financial Times. According to the Associated Press, the UK “smashed a century-old temperature record for the second time in 24 hours on Tuesday”. The newswire added that records “also fell in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west”. On Wednesday, Portugal hit a record May temperature of 40.3C, said BBC News.
‘BRUTAL REMINDER’: In parts of Italy, the heatwave triggered blackouts, reported Reuters. The heatwave has also been linked to more than a dozen deaths in the UK and France, including from people drowning and suffering heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said ABC News. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said the intense heatwaves were a “brutal reminder” of the cost of global warming, reported Politico. Carbon Brief has in-depth coverage of the record-shattering heatwave.
INDIA’S DEADLY HEAT: In the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, more than 100 people died within three days following an intense heatwave, reported the Khaleej Times. The publication noted that authorities urged people to stay indoors and avoid direct exposure to the heat. Meanwhile, some parts of India are “grappling with power cuts as record-breaking heat has pushed electricity demand to an all-time high”, reported Reuters.
Around the world
- CRUDE DIPS: The International Energy Agency (IEA) said global investments in oil projects will fall below $500bn in 2026, continuing a three-year decline, reported Bloomberg. Carbon Brief’s analysis of the data shows the US’s “data-centre boom” means it is now investing more in fossil-fuel power than China.
- DODGING NET-ZERO: The world’s biggest miner, Australian giant BHP, has backtracked on climate action by halting or delaying projects to cut “vast” amounts of emissions, according to a Guardian investigation.
- SOLAR SLIP: China’s new solar installations dropped for a fourth straight month, reflecting weakening domestic demand, said Bloomberg.
- NO LOGGING: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a new report, said Agence France-Presse.
- EXECUTIVE ACTION: Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency to fight a surge in coastal erosion, citing the need to protect natural resources and vulnerable communities, reported the Associated Press.
Four million
The number of homes in the UK with air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago, reported the Guardian. There are 29m households in the UK.
Latest climate research
- Carbon Brief will soon be launching a new fortnightly newsletter focused on climate research. Sign up for free today.
- LGBTQ+ households in the US are “significantly more likely” to face energy poverty and insecurity than the general population | Energy Research & Social Science
- Global rice-paddy greenhouse gas emissions have doubled over the past six decades | Nature Food
- Vegetation greening and human-caused warming are the “main drivers” of a surge in flash floods over the last decade | Science Advances
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
A Carbon Brief investigation has shed light on the impact of weather-related flooding on National Health Service (NHS) facilities across the UK. At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding. The chart above shows sites of weather-related flooding incidents at NHS facilities. The size of the circles indicates the number of incidents reported at each site.
Spotlight
How solar mini-grids can ‘help boost’ Nigeria’s economy
This week, Carbon Brief covers a new report on Nigeria’s solar mini-grid industry.
Amid the impact of the US-Iran war on the Nigerian economy, a new report has argued that solar-mini grids can help to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and create more than 200,000 jobs.
In Nigeria, Africa’s third-largest economy, the war has led to an increase in energy prices and a decrease in petrol consumption. Petrol is one of the country’s main sources of transport and household fuel. According to one estimate, prices have surged by up to 40% since the conflict commenced in February.
Although the Nigerian treasury has benefited from rising crude oil prices – the country is a major exporter of oil and gas – the impact has been most visible on the wider population.
Rising energy prices “have affected the purchasing power of workers”, Agnes Funmi Sessi, a labour union leader in Lagos, told Carbon Brief.
However, scaling the deployment of solar “mini-grids” could help the country move away from fossil fuels, stimulate rural economies and improve livelihoods, according to the new report authored by the thinktank, the Africa Policy Research Institute.
“We estimate that, by deploying over 10,000 mini-grids, the sector could create 212,688 direct full-time informal and productive-use jobs across the off-grid and under-grid market segments,” the report said.
A nascent industry
Solar “mini-grids” are small-scale, localised electricity generation and distribution systems powered by solar panels.
The report positioned Nigeria’s mini-grid sector as one of the fastest-growing in Africa, with the country having just 11 mini-grids in 2015 and 155 by 2024, along with at least 42 active developers.
Many of the companies within the sector are young and apply novel local techniques in their deployment of solar technology, the report said.
However, access to finance remains a huge barrier. According to the report, the sector may require up to $8bn to connect 35.4 million people to mini-grids.
“Most Nigerians want solar power in their homes, but it is a capital intensive business for vendors and customers,” Dr Ben Iheagwara, a renewable energy entrepreneur and policy analyst, told Carbon Brief.
The report urged the Nigerian government and its international partners to “attract private capital by de-risking investments and ensuring regulatory clarity and long-term planning”.
Other key recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders include investment in skills development and paying attention to the gender gap.
Powering rural communities
Many rural communities, which make up about 37% of the country, are disconnected from the national grid system, so often have to generate their own electricity through mini-grid systems.
According to Nigeria’s electricity regulator, NERC, a mini-grid is defined as a power generating system with an installed capacity of up to 10 megawatts.
A mini-grid can be powered by fossil fuels such as diesel or petrol, but solar power is now considered a cheaper and cleaner source.
With more than 80 million people lacking access to electricity in Nigeria, solar mini-grids are increasingly viewed as the lowest-cost electrification solution, the report said.
Watch, read, listen
MOVING FORWARD: The Energy Transition Show dug into electricity reform in South Africa, discussing the country’s coal legacy and the role of renewables.
ENERGY POVERTY: In an opinion article for Project Syndicate, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, Saliem Fakir, argued that the energy transition in emerging and developing economies is driven by economics and security rather than emissions targets.
VANISHING CITY: BBC News reported on a coastal community in Nigeria where the ocean has “already swallowed more than half of the town”.
Coming up
- 31 May: Colombia presidential elections
- 31 May-5 June: Global Environment Facility council meeting, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 2-5 June: The Venice Agreement for Peatlands workshop, Kisumu, Kenya
Pick of the jobs
- National Oceanography Centre, engagement assistant (external communications) | Salary: £28,254. Location: Southampton, UK
- Dangote Industries, decarbonisation specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Lagos, Nigeria
- City of New York, chief decarbonization officer | Salary: $261,469. Location: New York City
- Climate Central, writer and associate editor | Salary: $72,000-$75,000. Location: US (Remote)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids appeared first on Carbon Brief.
At the African Development Bank (AfDB) annual meetings this week, several African leaders called for investments in electricity infrastructure which go beyond lighting homes to powering economies.
Applauding the AfDB for its energy programmes like Mission 300 – which aims to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030 – the Central African Republic’s President Faustin-Archange Touadera said that without power supply “we will not be able to achieve development”.
Speaking alongside him, the Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso echoed this, saying that “as we need to help our people to turn towards agriculture, to turn towards livestock rearing, we also need to provide power to them.”
As the Mission 300 initiative advances, attention is increasingly shifting from simply connecting households to ensuring that electricity access translates into economic opportunities and livelihoods. That shift is driving the launch of a new Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy being developed under Mission 300 by the philanthropically funded Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP).
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Kenya seeks regional coordination to build African mineral value chains
Kenyan President William Ruto is the latest African leader to announce an end to raw mineral exports as governments want to add more value to their resources -
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Restricting raw materials exports is well-intentioned but without other policies to foster domestic processing, they can backfire -
Africa records fastest-ever solar growth, as installations jump in 2025
Africa’s solar power installations have increased sharply, driven by utility-scale projects and privately financed rooftop and commercial systems
In an interview with Climate Home News, Carol Koech, GEAPP’s vice president for Africa, said the initiative is designed to ensure that electrification supports income generation, agriculture and local economic development rather than only basic household access.
Q: What is the Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy aiming to achieve with Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 is increasingly being seen as a job platform and so the role of the Centre of Excellence in translating those electricity connections to jobs. So we want the centre to do four things. First, as a delivery engine, which enables countries to embed a cross-institutional advisor that supports the electrification components, but also other components that are happening in the country.
Second, we want the centre to be an innovation and strategy hub. Today, there’s really no place where you can go to find the state of the industry for productive use of energy across the globe, and we want to make the centre of excellence the place where you can go and get information about what technologies are available, where deployment is happening and how much is being deployed.
(Photo: Lighting Global/SunCulture/World Bank)
The third pillar is to coordinate and mobilise capital. We anticipate the centre coordinating internally within the ecosystem but also mobilising additional financing to help productivity. The last piece is how to scale businesses, enterprises and partnerships around this centre because we anticipate that as we grow this space, new industries will emerge and those industries will need to be supported.
Q: Why is productive use of energy becoming important under Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 gave us a bigger platform to demonstrate that energy is truly an enabler for economic development. It’s not sufficient to just provide a connection, but it is required that that connection truly translates to economic development for the communities that benefit.
We shouldn’t bring electricity and then start thinking about what people can do with it. We need to think about both at the same time and ensure electricity arrives together with the things that will make a difference in people’s lives. Historically, we’ve brought electricity and imagined a miracle would happen, but we know that hasn’t been the case.
The question is how to ensure universal access in the cheapest way while still transforming communities. Some mini-grids have been deployed in places where demand is extremely low, making them too expensive to sustain. But when mini-grids are paired with productive uses, the economics start to change. If businesses currently running on fossil fuel generators move to solar or renewable energy, operating costs fall and the business case for mini-grids becomes much stronger.
Q: How could this work in practice for agriculture and rural communities?
A: I’ll give you a practical example in our pilot country Zambia. Zambia has two programmes, they have the ASCENT programme for energy access and they also have the Zambia agribusiness and trade platform (ZATP). Some of the components of the ZATP programme – which is an agri-business program to help farmers to be productive – have a productive use component but don’t have an energy supply component. So we’re offering things like mills, processing facilities, irrigation and others. In some parts of Zambia, these productive use equipment has been supplied but has not been powered, so communities are not benefiting from that.
So the whole point is if we coordinate where the agribusiness programme is deployed together with where the energy access programme is deployed and layer those two programmes together in one place, then you could solve the energy access problem and solve productive use together and therefore have really meaningful outcomes for communities.
Q: How will the centre help both households and small businesses use electricity productively?
A: The question on whether we should electrify households or businesses is neither here nor there. We need to electrify all. The argument is really once we electrify businesses, the owners of those businesses will be able to pay what they need for their households as well as increase production for their businesses.
Electricity consumption is usually an indicator of economic development and by pushing productive use into households, especially where households are also smallholder farmers, the question becomes: how can electricity access translate to additional economic development for them? If you are connected onto a mini-grid, then you can actually use that connection to run irrigation, put in a dryer, or a cold storage system, whatever you require to improve your income but the fact that you have energy means that you can access productive use. Now, we need to ask ourselves how do these farmers or these households then get access to these appliances, because that’s another barrier.
Q&A: Will subsidy cuts for Chinese clean-tech exports hurt Africa’s solar boom?
The cost of these appliances is usually extremely high, and when you have programmes such as the ZATP running in Zambia, that’s already a public funding approach to making these appliances available and potentially reachable for farmers, either at household level, at farm level or at community level.
Q: How does this complement the already existing Mission 300 national energy compacts designed by countries?
A: Each of the national energy compacts have a productive use component, a pillar that talks about distributed renewable energy, productive use, and clean cooking. This is actually complementing the work of the countries, and this centre is like an available support, back office for countries to tap into as they implement their national energy compacts, if they have specific requirements and support for that pillar three.
So the advisers that will be embedded into countries, their role is to coordinate within country programs that are running where energy could make a difference. The advisers will be sourced from the country and so they will make sure that the donor money is coordinated to benefit the country fully. Their role will include going to ministries of agriculture or any related ministries and understanding where they are prioritising programmes that require electrification. In many cases, programmes and money have already been allocated, but this component is about how do we deploy it in a way that it actually truly brings a difference, so those advisers will do that.
Q: How will the centre address financing and private sector investment challenges?
A: What we’re really looking at is different financing mechanisms. In the past, we have provided subsidies and results-based financing to suppliers, distributors and manufacturers to help create markets for productive-use appliances. I see this as one mechanism the centre could use, but the bigger opportunity is aligning public funding across different programmes so that more of it can support productive uses, either through direct funding or subsidies.
Nigerians bet on solar as global oil shock hits wallets and power supplies
When it comes to private sector investment, the reality is that Africa’s energy sector still faces serious constraints. Most private investment has gone into power generation, particularly through independent power producers, and even then that has only been possible in places where the off-takers, usually utilities, are bankable.
To unlock more private capital, countries need the right policies, reforms and regulations, but even more importantly, utilities must become financially viable. If the off-taker is not bankable, then the project is not bankable.
Another major question is how to attract private investment into transmission infrastructure. There are different models being explored, but the reality is that public funding alone is not sufficient to achieve Mission 300, so finding new ways to mobilise private capital will be critical.
The post Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?
The “data-centre boom” is driving a surge in gas investment in the US, pushing its fossil-power spending ahead of China, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
A rapid expansion of data centres across the nation is at the heart of the US tech sector’s plans to continue “dominat[ing]” the global artificial intelligence (AI) industry.
High demand for electricity to power these data centres has led to companies rushing to build new gas-fired power plants across the country.
This trend, combined with “soaring” gas-turbine prices, drove a threefold increase in US gas‑power investment in 2025 – and the IEA expects this to continue throughout 2026.
As the chart below shows, Chinese investment in coal- and gas-fired power is expected to drop this year, amid domestic policy changes and the Iran war sending gas prices spiralling.
Together, these trends mean the IEA expects US investment in fossil-fuelled power plants to overtake China’s in 2026.
The IEA’s latest world energy investment report shows that spending on renewables and electricity grids continues to dominate at the global scale.
In the US, Trump administration policies such as the phase-out of tax credits for renewables has led to the IEA revising its forecast for new wind and solar power downwards.
At the same time, US electricity demand is expected to rise by an average of 2% per year from 2026 to 2030, with data centres contributing half of the overall increase.
This is leading to what the IEA calls an “AI-driven push” to build new gas-power plants in the US, the world’s largest data-centre market and largest gas producer.
Globally, orders for new gas-power plants increased to 130 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 – a 25-year high – and US demand was a “major factor” in this, according to the IEA.
Much of the demand is coming from tech companies in the US seeking to bypass grid connection queues by building “captive” gas-power plants.
As the chart below shows, since the start of 2025 these US captive data centres alone have signed off on more investment in new gas turbines than any country in the world – aside from the US itself.
Overall, investment in grid upgrades, power equipment and electricity generation to support the buildout of data-centre infrastructure around the world hit $105bn in 2025, according to the IEA.
This is more than the total invested in the energy sector across the whole of Africa – a continent where more than 600 million people do not have access to electricity.
The IEA notes that strong demand for gas-power plants for data centres in the US – and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East – is “limiting the availability of turbines for near-term deployment elsewhere in the world”.
The agency also points out that as the tech sector becomes a “major energy investor”, accounting for around 40% of all corporate power-purchase agreements, it is also “underpinning momentum” for emerging clean technologies, such as small modular nuclear reactors and advanced geothermal.
The post AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China appeared first on Carbon Brief.
AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?
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