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China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Shanghai cooperation summit
SUSTAINABLE COOPERATION: A “final declaration” from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin this week included a pledge to “strengthen cooperation on sustainable development issues”, said Russian news agency Tass. The SCO grouping, which includes China, India, Russia and others, adopted a “statement on sustainable energy development and approved a roadmap for implementing the strategy for energy cooperation” out to 2030, according to the full text of the declaration published by the Hindustan Times.
‘GREEN INDUSTRY’: In his speech at the summit, Chinese president Xi Jinping said that “China will establish three major platforms” for cooperation with other SCO members, covering “energy, green industry and the digital economy”, according to a transcript released by state news agency Xinhua. Xi committed to host the “SCO green and sustainable development forum” and to “work with” SCO countries to increase the installed capacity of solar and wind each by 10 gigawatts (GW) in the next five years. Xi added that SCO members “have rich energy resources” and “should seek integration, not decoupling”, according to the transcript. The Associated Press said that Xi was “attempting to expand the scope of the SCO”, originally a security forum. It added that his plans included a “development bank run by the organisation” and $1.4bn in loans over the next three years to member states.
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POWER OF SIBERIA 2: Meanwhile, Russia announced that it had signed a deal with China to build the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline linking the two countries, the Financial Times reported. Bloomberg cited Alexey Miller, CEO of Russian energy company Gazprom, saying the long-anticipated scheme could send as much as 50bn cubic metres of gas a year to China via Mongolia for 30 years. It noted that China had “yet to confirm the detail” of the deal. The flow of pipeline gas to China could “extend the oversupply period [of liquefied natural gas (LNG)] beyond the late 2020s”, according to a LinkedIn post by Anne-Sophie Corbeau, global research scholar at Center on Global Energy Policy. In another LinkedIn post, Michal Meidan, director of China energy programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, called the announcement a “huge turning point in the geopolitics of energy”. She said that China is “hedging against over reliance on US LNG” and that the project would “increase China’s reliance on Russian gas considerably”.
‘Absolute’ carbon market caps from 2027
ETS CAP: From 2027, China will begin introducing “absolute emissions caps in some industries for the first time” under its national carbon market, the emissions trading scheme (ETS), reported Reuters, citing a statement from the State Council. The newswire added that, according to this statement, the cap will be implemented with a combination of “free and paid carbon emissions allowances”. Bloomberg explained: “The plan also calls for setting absolute limits on emissions, a tougher standard than the current system, which imposes caps based on carbon intensity and allows emissions to rise over time.” The outlet quoted the official statement saying China is aiming to have a “transparent, standardised and internationally aligned voluntary reduction market” in place by 2030. State broadcaster CCTV reported the news in its morning bulletin, available online in three videos.
N2O ACTION PLAN: Meanwhile, China has published an action plan for controlling industrial emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), industry news outlet BJX News reported. N2O is a powerful greenhouse gas with 273-times the warming impact of carbon dioxide (CO2). The plan called for the emissions of N2O, per unit of production for specific chemicals, to decrease to a “world-leading level” by 2030. A government official said that N2O accounted for 4.3% of China’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, according to energy news outlet International Energy Net, with industrial processes accounting for 28% of N2O emissions overall.
MARKET INCENTIVES: The plan’s key measures include finance and market incentives and technology development, as well as monitoring and reporting, according to a summary published by the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. Dr Jiang Lin from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab said in a LinkedIn post that the “successful implementation” of this plan could “reduce emissions by about 120m tonnes of CO2 [carbon dioxide] equivalent a year”. China has pledged that its next 2035 “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) under the Paris Agreement will cover all greenhouse gases, whereas it previously only targeted CO2. It also discussed controls on N2O – and on methane – in talks with the outgoing Biden administration of the US late last year.
‘GREEN’ CITIES: China has also announced a policy for the construction of “high-quality urban development”, reported Xinhua. The headline of the report called the policy – issued by the Central Committee of the Communist party of China and the State Council – a “roadmap” (路线图) for China’s urban development, referring to a comment from Yang Baojun, chairman of the Urban Planning Society of China. The “main goal”, according to the policy, is to make “significant progress”, including cities’ “green and low-carbon” transitions, by 2030, and establishing “modern people’s cities” by 2035, added Xinhua.
Wind and solar capacity ‘tripled since 2020’
ENERGY ‘ACHIEVEMENTS’: At a press conference on China’s energy “achievements” during the 14th “five-year plan” period (2020-25), China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) said the capacity of wind and solar has more than tripled since the end of 2020, with the total hitting 1,680GW as of the end of July, reported finance news outlet Caixin. The head of the NEA said China was on track to achieve its “key” energy goals for the 14th five-year plan period “on schedule”, Xinhua reported, citing the agency’s head Wang Hongzhi. Wang stated that China’s wind and solar exports in the same period have allowed other countries to cut carbon emissions by 4bn tonnes, said another Xinhua article. CCTV said that, according to Wang, China’s “newly increased” electricity consumption between 2020-25 will exceed the “annual electricity consumption of the EU”.
‘SURGING’ POWER DEMAND: Electricity consumption growth over the next 10 years will ease from 5.6% per year out to 2030 to 4.3% a year to 2035, predicted Ouyang Changyu, deputy chief engineer of State Grid Corporation of China, according to financial outlet Yicai. He said China will “increasingly look” at its west and north regions of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet – which are rich in renewable energy resources such as solar, wind and hydropower – to meet this “surging” demand, added the outlet. Meanwhile, top economic planner the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) released new draft regulations on rules for the “medium- and long-term electricity market”, according to BJX News.
Solar and steel face ‘overcapacity’ controls
TACKLING ‘OVERCAPACITY’: The Chinese government has been continuing in its efforts to curb overcapacity of the solar industry, with Bloomberg reporting “signs of progress”. The Financial Times reported: “China has ordered the solar sector to rein in overcapacity and cut-throat pricing as the biggest manufacturers suffer billions of dollars in losses.” The steel industry, which has also been “tackl[ing] overcapacity”, will face a production cut between 2025 and 2026, Reuters reported, citing an “official document reviewed by Reuters and a source with knowledge of the matter”. A new steel policy will tighten controls on the production capacity and output of the sector, said Xinyi Shen, China team lead at thinktank the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), on LinkedIn.
EXPORTS TO AFRICA: Meanwhile, China exported more than 15GW in solar equipment to Africa over the past 12 months, Bloomberg reported, citing analysis of customs data by thinktank Ember. The New York Times, covering the same report, said Africa offered “huge” markets to Chinese solar panels when domestic prices had “fallen sharply” due to “overproduction”. Wired wrote that while solar sales remain small in Africa, the “global south appears to be at a turning point in how it thinks about energy”, with solar “emerging as the cheaper and greener way forward” for the first time. A Wall Street Journal newsletter also noted the African solar figures and the debate around “overcapacity”, adding: “There’s a novel dimension to China’s clean-tech boom. It’s possible, in the context of climate change, to estimate the ‘correct’ production volume – not based on current levels of supply and demand, but on what’s required to limit global warming.”
Captured
Spotlight
China’s adaptation to ‘more frequent and intense’ heat extremes
China has seen a series of temperature records broken this summer. The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) says that “extreme high temperatures” have shown an “increasing trend” in China since its records began in 1961.
In this issue, Carbon Brief looks into the heat extremes in China and how the country is adapting to the impacts. The full article is available on Carbon Brief’s website.
How are heat extremes changing in China?
China’s average annual temperature is rising, according to data from the CMA’s Climate Bulletins, with 2024 being the hottest year on record.
Moreover, as the global climate has warmed, the number of “hot days” that China is experiencing has been on the rise.
The CMA defines a “hot day” or “high temperature day” as one that reaches or exceeds 35C. It adds that “high temperatures for several consecutive days constitute a heatwave”.
Prof Wenjia Cai, from the department of earth system science of Tsinghua University, told Carbon Brief that there are more ways to define heatwaves than CMA’s absolute threshold of 35C.
However, regardless of the definition used, the “number of heatwave days is definitely increasing as a result of climate change”, she added.
What role does human-caused climate change play?
A field of climate science called “attribution” has emerged over the past two decades to establish the role that human-caused warming plays in individual extreme weather events.
Some 114 extremes and trends in China have been the subject of an attribution study, including more than 20 relating specifically to extreme heat.
One study found that “more intense and more frequent warm extremes” were observed across “most regions” in China during 1951-2018 and that “greenhouse gas forcing plays a dominant role” in this.
What impact are these heatwaves having?
Heatwaves have a wide variety of impacts on human activities, such as public health, crop yields and economic output.
In 2023, more than 30,000 deaths were related to heatwaves in China – 1.9 times higher than the average over 1986-2005, according to a report by Cai and her colleagues.
Another profound impact of heatwaves is that they can exacerbate droughts, with knock-on impacts for agriculture.
Droughts in 2024 hit more than 11 million people in China, with more than 1.2m hectares of affected crops and direct economic losses topping nearly 8.4bn yuan ($1.2bn), the Ministry of Emergency Management said in early 2025.
Heat-related economic losses could reach nearly 5% of China’s GDP by 2060, according to a recent guest post for Carbon Brief.
Other than manufacturing, electricity supplies in China have also been frequently reported to be affected by hot days.
Dr Muyi Yang, senior energy analyst at thinktank Ember, told Carbon Brief that “when temperatures soar, electricity demand spikes – mainly due to air conditioning – and that can stretch the grid, especially in already tight systems”.
How is China adapting to heatwaves?
In recent years, China has implemented more and more policies aimed at adapting to heatwaves. For example, weather forecasts and heatwave alerts have been provided.
Central and local governments have also issued labour policies aimed at protecting workers against extreme heat.
Last year, China published the “national climate change health adaptation action plan (2024-30)”. This followed the 2022 publication of a national adaptation strategy for 2035, which mentions heatwaves in relation to the power sector, agriculture and health.
Ember’s Yang says that in terms of the electricity system, the old “planning psychology” needs to shift towards a more coordinated strategy, so that it can better cope with extreme heat:
“For example, during extreme heat, instead of just ramping up supply, we should also be encouraging users to reduce or shift their electricity use during peak hours, using price signals or incentives.”
Watch, read, listen
HONG KONG ROOF: Climate outlet Xylom published an article exploring why rooftop solar panels have not been rolled out at scale in Hong Kong.
GRID REFORM: In an article for China Electricity Power News shared by Xinhua, Prof Xia Qing of Tsinghua University and Chen Yuguo, director of Qingneng Interconnection Consulting, discussed how developing “new energy market entry and trading mechanisms” will help China’s grid reforms.
ENERGY AND TECHNOLOGY: Dan Wang, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab, talked to Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast about China’s “breakneck economic growth”, as well as developments in energy, industry and technology.
AMAZON REPORTING: Greenpeace East Asia interviewed Liu Min, one of only three independent Chinese journalists who reported from the COP16 biodiversity summit last November in Colombia, finding out her reporting journeys in the Amazon.
52.2 billion yuan
The value of “direct economic losses” in China – equivalent to $7.3bn in July 2025 alone – due to flooding, landslides, earthquakes and drought, according to a Reuters report citing China’s Ministry of Emergency Management. The newswire said “road damages” since 1 July amounted to 16bn yuan ($2.2bn), according to the Ministry of Transport.
New science
Climate impacts and future trends of hailstorms in China based on millennial records
Nature Communications
The number of “hailstorm days” in China “increased significantly” after 1850 due to global warming, according to a new study. The authors combined hail damage records from Chinese historical books, governmental hail damage records and hailstorm observations from more than 2,000 meteorological stations around China to analyse the variation in hailstorm days over the past 2,890 years. They also developed a model, which suggests a further increase in the number of hailstorm days as the planet continues to warm.
The 2021 Henan flood increased citizen demand for government-led climate change adaptation in China
Communications earth and environment
The 2021 flood in Henan – one of the deadliest floods in China’s history – led to a “sharp increase” in petitions for drainage, neighborhood safety and flood prevention, according to new research. The authors analysed “citizen engagement” on a government-run petition platform to “examine how residents communicate demands for public safety and infrastructure”. The study showed that “climate risk can catalyse political engagement in non-democratic settings, highlighting the value of citizen input in adaptation planning”, according to the authors.
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 4 September 2025: Shanghai cooperation summit; ETS ‘absolute emissions cap’; China’s heatwave adaptation appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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?
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.
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AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China
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