Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.
China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Emissions fell in first half
POWERING THE TRANSITION: China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell 1% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, new analysis for Carbon Brief found, extending a decline that began in March 2024. Power sector emissions fell by 3% during this period, as growth in solar power alone matched the 170 terawatt-hour (TWh) rise in electricity demand, the analysis said. It noted that the sector’s coal use fell 3.4% year-on-year, while gas use increased by 6%. The analysis added that, even if China’s emissions fall in 2025, it will likely miss multiple climate targets this year, such as carbon intensity.
DEMAND UP, PRICES DOWN: Reuters reported that in July, which is not covered in the Carbon Brief analysis, China’s fossil-fuelled power generation “rose 4.3%…from a year earlier”, due to high cooling demand. Extreme heat continued to push power demand to new highs in early August, China Energy News said, with China seeing record demand continuously over 4-6 August. At one point demand reached 1,233 gigawatts, it added. Business news outlet Caixin reported that, despite this, power was “actually getting cheaper in some regions”, driven by the “growing share of renewables in the power mix”.
‘SHORT-TERM SHOCKS’: Extreme heat, heavy rains and floods “caused short-term shocks to economic operations”, Singapore-based outlet Lianhe Zaobao quoted a government official as saying. “Bad weather” specifically affected “steel and coal output”, according to Bloomberg, with the coal industry “also contending with government inspections”. The government will allocate 100bn yuan ($14bn) to “support businesses hit by natural disasters”, Reuters said.
PETROCHEMICALS RISING: The only major sector that saw growth in emissions during the first half of 2025 was the chemicals sector, the Carbon Brief analysis said, rising around 47% year-on-year. At least one segment of the industry is “set to expand by almost half between now and 2028”, Reuters cited a representative of oil giant Sinopec as saying. Meanwhile, state news agency Xinhua said Sinopec is “promoting the construction of a Beautiful China through the development of a beautiful petrochemical industry”.
Clean-tech exports stayed strong
OVERSEAS GROWTH: China’s exports of clean-energy technologies “rose further in July”, Caixin said, with Chinese lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle (EV) exports in the first seven months of 2025 rising around 26% year-on-year, by value. Solar cell exports also rose 54% in terms of volume over this period, it noted, although by value they “fell 23%”. Industry outlet PV Magazine said that China’s exports of solar cells and wafers had “increased significantly”, but that exports of panels declined. Meanwhile, the government has held its second meeting in two months with solar industry representatives on curbing overcapacity, Reuters said. Elsewhere, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) covered new research finding that, in 2024, Chinese EV companies invested more overseas than they did in China “for the first time”.
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‘PRAGMATIC’ ON CLIMATE: Chinese ambassador to the UK Zheng Zeguang argued China and the UK should work “more closely” to address climate change, in a Guardian commentary. (Zheng has also become China’s first permanent representative to the London-based International Maritime Organization, according to Xinhua.) In response to an article by UK government adviser Chris Stark saying that the UK should join China in becoming an “electrostate”, the Global Times published an editorial saying the UK’s energy transition “hinges on pragmatic cooperation” with China. Meanwhile, President Xi Jinping said China and Brazil should “ensure the success” of COP30, Xinhua reported.
CHINA’S SECURITY CONCERNS: China’s third-largest hydropower station has “fully transitioned away” from using western-made chips due to “national security and supply chain resilience concerns”, SCMP reported. The government also issued a notice on “strengthening” supervision of smart EVs, International Energy Net said, including software updates. China’s exports of permanent magnets and other rare-earth products “extended their recovery in July”, Bloomberg said, with export volumes rising 69% from a month earlier. The country is also warning foreign companies not to “stockpile rare earths and derived products such as magnets”, the Financial Times reported.
National ecology day
GREEN TO GOLD: China must “adopt green development approaches to grow our mountains of gold and silver”, Premier Li Qiang said, according to energy news outlet International Energy Net, at an event marking national ecology day. The event was also held on the 20th anniversary of President Xi Jinping’s speech in Zhejiang province, in which he emphasised that “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”. [Read more on Xi’s “two mountains” theory in this analysis by Carbon Brief.] Li added that China must “steadily promote the green and low-carbon transformation of industries” and “collaborate with all parties to…address climate change”, it said.
OFFICIALS SPEAK: Speaking a few days earlier, Chinese climate envoy Liu Zhenmin told a conference that “green and low-carbon innovation… [is] the new engine driving global economic growth”, the state-run newspaper China Daily reported, adding that he “attributed much of [China’s energy] transformation to the ‘two mountains’ theory”. National Development and Reform Commission head Zheng Shanjie wrote an essay on the theory for the ideological journal Research on Xi Jinping Economic Thought, saying China must “coordinate efforts to reduce carbon emissions, mitigate pollution, expand green spaces and promote economic growth”. Environment minister Huang Runqiu also said this in a speech broadcasted by the Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily, adding that the tasks “may seem independent, but are actually closely interconnected”.
MEDIA REACTIONS: State media also issued commentaries on the theory, with the People’s Daily publishing a “Ren Ping” commentary – a byline indicating the article reflects party leaders’ views – saying it is a “beacon” for “global green development”. A People’s Daily commentary under the byline He Yin – which similarly signals that the article reflects party leaders’ views on international affairs – said the theory “contributes Chinese wisdom and solutions to building a clean and beautiful world”. An editorial in the state-supporting Global Times said: “Especially at a time when climate change is an urgent global challenge, [the theory] is timely, visionary and inspiring.”
Draft policies and pilot projects
COUNTING CARBON: The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) issued four more draft methodologies for China’s voluntary carbon market, three of which address “gas recovery and utilisation” from oil- and gas-fields, BJX News reported. The MEE also published a draft revision to guidelines for provincial greenhouse gas inventories that aims to “enhance the scientific rigour, standardisation and practicality” of compiling the documents, another BJX News article said. Meanwhile, China will also develop “national carbon measurement centres” to help support the development of carbon measurement capabilities, finance outlet EastMoney said.
‘GREEN FUELS’: Meanwhile, China has established nine pilot projects to develop “green fuels” including ammonia, methanol and ethanol, finance news outlet Yicai said, adding that many of the projects use “green hydrogen as a raw material to produce” the chemicals. Separately, China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) said in a statement that it placed “great importance on the development of green liquid fuels”, with co-firing in coal-fired power plants an “important pathway…to achieve low-carbon development”, BJX News reported. According to another BJX News article, the NEA also said it attached “great importance” to the gas-power industry and would continue to plan new “peak-shaving gas-fired power plants”.
OTHER POLICIES: Elsewhere, the NEA released draft guidelines for “assessing the capacity of power grids to accommodate distributed power sources”, BJX News said. Guangdong has become the first province in China to “recognise greenhouse gas emissions quotas as legal collateral for loans”, Yicai reported. Xinhua reported that the China Consumer Association has issued draft guidelines for “green consumption” that explore how “every green consumption choice can contribute to significant emission reduction effects”.
Spotlight
Guest spotlight: How China could decarbonise its cement industry
China could use a “whole-of-system” approach to decarbonise its cement industry, according to a report released today by thinktank Climate Analytics.
In this issue, report author James Bowen, Climate Analytics climate and energy policy analyst, examines how China could reduce the sector’s country-sized emissions.
China’s challenge in managing the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions accompanying its economic rise is best illustrated by cement.
From about 200m tonnes (Mt) in 1990, Chinese cement production – almost all of which is domestically consumed – climbed to 2.5bn tonnes (Gt) in 2014 and has remained near this level for about a decade.
Its cement sector now emits more than the entire economies of all but three countries other than China itself – more than 1.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) a year.
Cement decline significant but not enough for 1.5C
China’s main cement emissions challenge is that it continues to use far more cement and cement products per person than most countries.
Cement demand is now entering sustained decline as China’s economy restructures. Based on current trends, national production could drop below 1Gt by 2050.
But analysts have estimated that in addition to cutting demand – potentially even further than expected by 2050 – the emissions per unit of production would also need to fall, to align with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Specifically, they estimate that emissions per unit would need to fall to around 360kg of CO2 per tonne by 2030 and 55-90kg by 2050. If each tonne of future Chinese cement continues to generate about 550kg of CO2, as at present, then the sector will remain well off this pace.
This task is formidable. Cement is an inexpensive, high-performance building material with widely available feedstocks.
About 90% of its emissions come from producing clinker – a key ingredient.
Unavoidable process emissions account for the majority of these emissions. But producers globally have also not yet managed to eliminate the remainder of clinker emissions, which result from heating cement kilns.
Cement’s emissions intensity in China has also rebounded since 2015, driven by new restrictions on cement with lower clinker content, due to quality concerns.
Many areas of past emissions-reduction success in China’s cement sector, such as energy efficiency, are approaching their technical limits.
These challenges help explain why carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) remains prominent in cement net-zero roadmaps globally.
But CCUS remains expensive and underperforming, given relatively little improvement in learning rates and related cost reductions. Plans to deploy CCUS therefore present a risk of diverting attention from cheaper and more effective abatement options – or failing to deliver as expected. This could sustain considerable mid-century residual emissions, jeopardising net-zero goals.
A ‘whole-of-system’ approach
An alternative “whole-of-system” approach could help China meet its cement emissions challenge more cheaply, without relying so heavily on the promise of CCUS.
This could include enhanced cement demand reduction, such as by extending building lifespans; optimising how concrete is designed and used; using alternative materials – such as timber – where appropriate; and reducing and reusing construction waste.
It could also include accelerating uptake of lower-carbon production technologies, such as alternative cement kiln fuels, electrified kiln heating, as well as low-clinker and alternative binder cements.
A wide range of policy support could advance this whole-of-system approach, including by ensuring a just transition for cement workers and impacted communities.
China has said it is working to include cement in the national emissions trading system (ETS) by 2027.
China could also incentivise companies to use less clinker by adopting a cement-based ETS benchmark, rather than a clinker benchmark, which has encouraged EU firms to continue using the carbon-intensive material under the region’s own ETS.
China could also displace coal from kiln heating, by adopting European-like measures to encourage the use of biomass or waste-derived fuels.
Meanwhile, reform in areas including industry standards, finance, market access and research and development could accelerate adoption of other low-emissions technologies and processes.
Watch, read, listen
WINNING ON STEEL?: China is gradually putting the conditions in place to become a world leader in developing low-carbon steel, according to Canary Media.
TRANSMISSION OMISSION: Jiemian explored how limited transmission capacity and “pricing discrepancies” is hampering China’s development of sending low-carbon power across provinces.
CHINA’S RISE: The Asia Society broadcasted a panel event from its summer summit discussing the factors behind China’s rise as a leader in new-energy and other technologies.
INDUSTRIAL DECARBONISATION: The Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress assessed key steps for improving China’s ability to tackle industrial emissions through zero-carbon industrial parks, informed by an expert dialogue.
15
The number of people who died during flooding in northern China’s Gansu province in early August, China Daily reported.
13
The death toll of flooding this week in Inner Mongolia, another northern province, according to Reuters.
New science
Increasing tropical cyclone residence time along the Chinese coastline driven by track rotation
npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
Tropical cyclones now spend “substantially” more time travelling along China’s coastal regions than they did in the 1980s, according to new research. The study found that tropical cyclones travelling along the coast of China have “become more parallel to the coastline since the 1980s” and the amount of time they spend travelling along the Chinese coast has increased by 2.5 hours per decade during this period. It added that these changes have “led to prolonged durations of heavy rainfall in the coastal regions”.
Resources, Conservation and Recycling
A new study estimated that the average carbon intensity of the electricity used in China fell from 983 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour (gCO2/kwh) in 1997 to 545gCO2/kwh in 2022, “cumulatively avoiding 15.8bn tonnes of potential CO2 emissions”. The study used electric-generating unit level data and decomposition analysis to evaluate the effects of different decarbonisation policies on power plants. It found that changes to the fuel mix in China’s coal-fired power plants, reductions in the amount of heat energy needed to generate electricity and deployment of large-sized plants contributed most to reducing carbon emissions.
China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 21 August 2025: China’s CO2 decline; ‘Two mountains’; China’s cement challenge appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China Briefing 21 August 2025: China’s CO2 decline; ‘Two mountains’; China’s cement challenge
Climate Change
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
Researchers are testing whether cross-breeding elkhorn corals from Florida and Honduras can help restore lost genetic diversity and improve the threatened species’ ability to withstand warmer waters.
Nearly three dozen young lab-grown elkhorn corals were outplanted onto reefs in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park this spring, including a group of “Flondurans,” marking the first time this experimental cross-breed of Florida and Honduran elkhorn corals was introduced to the remote park about 70 miles from Key West.
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
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 -
Africa needs more than export bans to cash in on critical minerals, experts say
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?
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
Biggest Threat to Human Civilization
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
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