Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.
Carbon Brief handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
China to achieve emission peak, carbon neutrality ‘ahead of its deadline’
ENERGY OPTIMISM: China’s post-Covid economic “situation” has led to “growing optimism” among energy experts that the country could peak carbon emissions earlier than its deadline of 2030, said the South China Morning Post, citing the second China Climate Transition Outlook survey by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and the International Society for Energy Transition Studies. More than 70% of experts in the survey believe that China can achieve its goal of peak carbon emissions before 2030, while just over a fifth believe China could peak emissions before 2025, compared with 15% in the 2022 survey, reported the state-run newspaper China Daily. It also mentioned that experts had “mixed views” on when the country would witness a peak in coal consumption. Economic news outlet Jiemian quoted Shen Xinyi, a policy analyst with CREA, saying that coal power plants in China were seeing a “boom” because of power shortages in the past two years and the government needs to guide existing coal power plants to improve their operational flexibility. (See Carbon Brief’s newly published in-depth profile of China, which covers a wide range of topics including: climate laws; policies for fossil fuels, renewables, hydro and nuclear; transport; agriculture and forests; plus climate impacts and adaptation.)
EARLY NEUTRALITY: China’s target of net-zero by 2060 is “likely to be achieved” a decade earlier than previously assumed, wrote Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, world economy editor of the UK’s Daily Telegraph. He quoted Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder, CREA, saying that the roll-out of renewables is outpacing the rise in electricity demand in China and there will be a fall in total carbon dioxide emitted in the first half of next year. (The piece draws heavily on Myllyvirta’s recent analysis for Carbon Brief.) Evans-Pritchard said that China approving two new coal plants a week does not mean what many in the West think it means. China is adding one gigawatt (GW) of coal power, on average, as back-up for every six GW of new renewable power, he said: “The two go hand in hand.” Although president Xi Jinping “was never going to let climate worries alone hold back China’s rise”, he concluded, the alignment of Xi’s personal interest in environmental policy with China’s strength in “clean-tech” industries drove China’s commitment to peaking carbon emissions, which will be “a watershed moment for global geopolitics, and for humanity”.
More signals emerge around CCER restart
CCER RESTART: Energy news outlet IN-EN.com reported that Lai Xiaoming, chairman of the Shanghai Environmental Energy Exchange, remarked in a speech that the China Certified Emissions Reduction (CCER) voluntary carbon market scheme will restart “soon”. According to the outlet, he added that the new CCERs will “follow the three principles of authenticity, uniqueness and additionality”. Earlier this month, the central government released the trial registration rules and the project design and implementation guidelines for CCERs, two key documents that could signal the imminent resumption of trading, energy news outlet BJX News said. The central government continues to back the Beijing Green Exchange as a key administrative body in the carbon market, calling for the ministry of commerce and Beijing municipal government to support it in “build[ing] a national unified greenhouse gas voluntary emission reduction trading centre”, another BJX News piece reported.
CBAM PREPARATION: As China continues to eye the impact of the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), it has pledged to establish carbon-footprint accounting rules and standards for 50 key products by 2025, finance newswire Wall Street CN reported. This will be expanded to 200 products by 2030, it added. Regulators will “initially focus on developing standards for cement, iron and steel, aluminium and fertilisers” in order to meet CBAM requirements, analysis by consulting firm Trivium China explained. “China-EU trade will be substantially affected” by CBAM, a representative of the National Energy Group wrote for BJX News. As far as China is concerned, he argued, “the introduction of the EU carbon tariff system will directly affect the ability of Chinese companies to make profits, survive and develop, and also have a substantial impact on China’s import and export trade and production structures”. Days before the opening of the COP28 climate talks in Dubai, UAE, the BASIC group of countries, including China, tabled a request to put “unilateral trade measures” – such as the CBAM – on the official agenda. Carbon Brief understands this and other additions to the agenda will not be officially adopted, but will be taken up elsewhere.
OFFSET CONTROVERSY: A new report by Greenpeace revealed that 85% of all “carbon-neutral LNG [liquified natural gas]” cargoes have been sold to buyers in Asia. There are concerns around the transparency of the forestry offsets used to certify “carbon neutral” LNG, Greenpeace added, especially in terms of “impermanence, baseline, additionality and double-counting”. In a statement, Greenpeace East Asia project leader Li Jiatong said “carbon offsets are a smoke screen to obscure their continued, redoubled carbon emissions. And China is emerging as a major marketplace for such credits.”
Xi: Sustainable development is ‘golden key’ to tackle climate change
‘GOLDEN KEY’: Chinese president Xi Jinping said “sustainable development” is the “golden key” to fixing current global problems on 16 November, during the APEC meeting in San Francisco, the state news agency Xinhua reported. Xi proposed accelerated implementation of the UN 2030 agenda for sustainable development, joint multilateral action to “promote carbon reduction, pollution reduction, green expansion and growth in a coordinated manner” and building global synergy to address climate change, the news agency added. A separate Xinhua article published a speech delivered by Xi shortly before the summit, in which he said “construction of an ecological civilisation requires skilful navigation of various key relationships”, including the balance between “development and protection”. His speech also stressed China’s commitment to its “dual carbon” goals are “unwavering”, but the path and pace of achieving them must be determined by China alone.
CORRECT UNDERSTANDING: Elsewhere, the Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily published a commentary by “Zhongsheng” – a collective pseudonym that signals the approval of top party leadership – saying that, during the Xi-Biden meeting, Xi highlighted that “it is in the interests of both countries and the expectation of the international community that China-US relations should stabilise and improve”, but that “suppressing China’s science and technology means curbing China’s high-quality development and depriving the Chinese people of their right to development, which China will never agree to and will never succeed”.
Spotlight
What China climate experts expect at COP28
At the opening of the China pavilion at COP28, ministry of ecology and environment head Huang Runqiu said he hopes that COP28 will “fully respond to the demands of developing countries”, while climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said that China is “ready to continue to work with all parties to…send a positive signal…in this crucial decade”.
With a “vanishingly small” remaining carbon budget meaning there is only a “14% chance” of keeping global warming below 1.5C under current pledges, there are high expectations and many unanswered questions as COP28 opens. Chief among these are what the outcomes of the global stocktake will be, who will contribute to the loss and damage fund and what language around fossil fuels will look like.
At COP27, China was seen as engaged and “genial” in public forums, but “stuck to its familiar positions” in formal negotiations. This year, the recent US-China climate agreement may create greater space for a global consensus at COP, but, in many cases, the two superpowers may be on “opposite sides of the negotiating table”.
As delegates flood into Dubai for the conference, Carbon Brief asks leading experts what they expect from COP – and what China’s role will be. Their responses have been edited for clarity and length.
Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute:
China will be under the spotlight at COP28, as in previous COPs. The meeting’s main tasks – the first global stocktake, a robust energy transition package including the need to move away from fossil fuel and support to vulnerable countries for their losses and damages – all require active Chinese contribution.
The recent stabilisation of the US-China relationship provides necessary, but insufficient, conditions for success at COP28. Dubai remains a test on China’s climate appetite in light of its domestic and international challenges. Political signals from COP28 will also play a critical role for China’s domestic climate agenda and will shape Beijing’s decisions in 2024 on a number of key issues including its 2035 NDC (nationally determined contribution, or climate pledge), its role in providing financial support to the global south and its direction on coal consumption.
Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air:
The potentially most impactful agreement that could come from COP28 is a target to triple renewable energy capacity globally from 2022 to 2030, which would put the power sector on track to the emission reductions required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. This is a target that China should be able to support and even agree to contribute to financing…China has supported the creation of the loss and damage fund and even said it would be willing to contribute on a voluntary basis.
It’s unlikely that China would commit to any specific targets for 2035 right now, but at least an indication that there will be an absolute emission reduction target for 2035 would be a step forward. So far, China has refused to set absolute emission targets, sticking with CO2 intensity targets that are designed to allow emissions to rise.
Symbolically, agreeing to “phase down” or “phase out” unabated fossil fuels could be an important outcome. China already accepted the language to “phase down” coal at Glasgow in 2021 and, given that oil and gas are less important for China than coal, agreeing on the same language on all fossil fuels should not be too hard. However, a phase-out, especially with a deadline such as 2050, might be more than China’s leaders are willing to agree on.
Bernice Lee, Hoffmann distinguished fellow for sustainability at Chatham House:
First of all, China does not want to be blamed as a blocker of multilateral progress, a lesson it has learned from Copenhagen [in 2009]. Second, it will likely emphasise its achievements in renewable energy and electric vehicle production, investments and deployment, as well as its role in cost reduction of these much-needed products in a low-carbon economy. In general, [China will place] an emphasis on implementation of current goals rather than [further] target-setting. It will also likely join forces with poor countries in asking developed economies to deliver the billions needed for climate finance.
Dr Fang Li, China country director at the World Resources Institute:
Alarm bells are ringing, as the window to secure a livable future is rapidly closing. Countries, cities, businesses and financial institutions must urgently get on a new path, transitioning away from systems that exploit people and nature toward those where people’s essential needs are met, land is managed sustainably and emissions are sharply reduced.
COP28 is not just about carbon, it is also about nature, about livelihood, etc. Solutions are not solely based in specific countries or regions. We hope COP28 can be a place that motivates and accelerates more inspiring, ambitious and practical collaborations. As one of the biggest emitters, China is also trying to be one of the biggest contributors to the sustainable future. We’ve observed many positive actions and signals, including on reducing non-CO2 emissions, accelerating food sustainable transition, engaging more resources from private sectors, greening global value chain, strengthening climate actions at subnational levels, etc. We hope to see further discussions and actions from China and other parties during and after the conference.
Watch, read, listen
CLIMATE POLITICS: Prof Brian Wong and Kevin Zongzhe Li argued in China-US Focus that the US and China must consider ASEAN as a partner in developing climate policy and not as “just another battleground”.
FROM THE ROOFTOPS: An article in Nature explored the development of distributed solar in China, which is allowing the government to “vigorously develop renewable energy”.
COP28 CHATTER: The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies discussed the key themes that will dominate conversations at COP28 and China’s position on many of these issues.
REUSING WASTE: The South China Morning Post reported how one company is turning leftover hotpot oil in the city of Chengdu – which can total 150,000 tonnes annually – into jet fuel.
New science
Public discourses and government interventions behind China’s ambitious carbon neutrality goal
Nature Communications Earth & Environment
A new study examines the public discourses around China’s climate goals of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, and how they might have been influenced by the Chinese government. Through analysis of approximately one million microblogs from China, the researchers find seven types of climate discourses emerging, including scientific, moral, economic, co-benefit, energy security, political and global frames. They also reveal that there is generally a high level of support towards China’s carbon neutrality goal.
Assessing the effectiveness of emissions trading schemes: evidence from China
Climate Policy
New analysis explored the effect of low carbon prices in China’s emissions trading system (ETS) on the country’s ability to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, while maintaining economic growth. The results indicate that an increase of $1 in the carbon price would reduce CO2 emissions by 1.69% and increase per-capita GDP by $286. The study found that these benefits were brought about by technological innovation, foreign direct investment and improvements to the energy mix and industrial structure. Carbon leakage to neighbouring regions was not evident, it added.
Storyline attribution of human influence on a record-breaking spatially compounding flood-heat event
Science Advances
New research conducted a storyline attribution analysis to discover possible causes of the 2020 record-breaking spatially compounding flood-heat event in China. The researchers found that there could be a further intensification of compound events by the end of this century, with moderate emissions making the rainfall totals approximately 14% larger and the season approximately 2.1C warmer in south China compared to 2020.
China Briefing is compiled by Anika Patel and edited by Wanyuan Song and Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org.
The post China Briefing 30 November: China at COP28; Xi’s ‘unwavering’ climate commitment; Voluntary carbon market restart appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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).
-
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
-
Climate Change10 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases10 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Renewable Energy7 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Greenhouse Gases11 months ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测