We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Flooded food baskets
AG EMERGENCY: Flash flooding has destroyed thousands of acres of crops in Punjab, a province that accounts for 68% of Pakistan’s total annual food grain production, Bloomberg reported. Around 60% of the province’s rice crops and 30% of its sugarcane have been lost, according to preliminary estimates by the Pakistan Business Forum. Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported that the forum has written to the prime minister to ask the government to declare an “agricultural emergency”. The New York Times spoke to farmers affected by the flooding.
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CROSS-BORDER IMPACTS: In Indian Punjab, at least 148,000 hectares of cropland have been “submerged” by floodwaters, BBC News reported. It continued: “Punjab is often referred to as the ‘food basket’ of India and is a major source for agricultural production, particularly of staples like wheat and rice.” It added that a “quarter of Punjab’s 30 million people depend on agriculture” for their livelihoods. The Guardian spoke to Indian farmers left reeling from the impacts of flooding on their crops. Reuters reported that flooding has driven up the prices of aromatic basmati rice, grown exclusively in India and Pakistan.
CLIMATE ‘VULNERABLE’: In its coverage, Al Jazeera reported that there has not yet been a formal assessment of the role of climate change in the ongoing floods, but it is likely to be a key factor in their severity. It added that Pakistan “ranks among the top 10 most climate-vulnerable nations, but it contributes less than 1% of global emissions”. The Washington Post covered how deforestation has conspired with accelerating glacier melt and harsher monsoon rains to drive worse flash floods in the country.
‘Tropical forests forever’
FLAGSHIP FUND: Brazil is planning to make its Tropical Forest Forever Facility one of two priority initiatives at the COP30 climate summit in the Amazon city of Belém in November, according to a Financial Times report from São Paulo and Brasília. First proposed at COP28 in 2023, the facility aims to leverage finance from developed nations and philanthropic foundations to make protecting tropical forests in developing nations profitable, the Financial Times explained in a second report.
RAISING BILLIONS: A “crucial” aspect of the plan is to “not rely on donations”, the newspaper said, adding: “Instead it would be financed entirely by interest-bearing debt.” It noted that the fund “would become the world’s biggest ‘blended finance’ vehicle if it can get anywhere close to its target size [of $125bn]”. There are 74 developing countries with a total of more than 1bn hectares of tropical forests that could be eligible for the scheme if they can prove that they have an annual deforestation rate of less than 0.5%, the newspaper added.
SUBSIDY REFORM: Meanwhile, Astrid Schomaker, the executive secretary of the UN biodiversity convention, has written to countries urging them to identify subsidies that are harmful to nature in their long-overdue national biodiversity plans and “take concrete implementation action” to reform them. Reducing the amount spent on subsidies harmful to nature by $500bn by 2030 was one of the targets of the landmark Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). However, countries have so far done little to identify such spending or conceptualise paths for reform at talks following the agreement of the GBF, Carbon Brief reporting has shown.
News and views
TREATY AHOY?: Two more countries – Cape Verde and Saint Kitts and Nevis – ratified the landmark High Seas Treaty during preparatory meetings last week, Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported. Grenada and Cambodia also ratified the agreement, meaning only four more countries need to officially sign before the treaty can enter into force. Separately, the Philippines “br[oke new] ground” by establishing the 370-acre Bitaug marine protected area, creating a “safe space” for sharks and rays and allowing revenue-sharing from eco-tourism, Forbes reported.
ACT-ING UP: ACT, part of New Zealand’s ruling coalition, called for the country to leave the “broken” Paris Agreement, citing the “real cost to firms, farms and families” from net-zero targets, Radio New Zealand reported. The country’s prime minister, Christopher Luxon, pushed back against pulling out from the accord, it added, telling reporters that it would be the “quickest way” to hurt New Zealand farmers and that “competitor countries would like nothing more than to see New Zealand products off their shelves”.
FIRE-PROOFING: In the aftermath of August’s “heatwave-fuelled” wildfires, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced a 10-point plan to prepare the country for climate change, including a “rethink of forest management and land use”, the Guardian reported. Sanchez was quoted as saying: “If we don’t want to bequeath our children a Spain that’s grey from fire and flames, or a Spain that’s brown from floods, then we need a Spain that’s greener.” CBS News reported that two climate activists were arrested for throwing paint at Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia while protesting government “complicity” in the fires, which they attributed to livestock farming.
OCTOPUS ‘PLAGUE’: An unusual explosion in octopus numbers in English waters this summer has left UK shellfish harvesters at a loss, Agence France-Presse reported. A long-lasting marine heatwave gave a boost to octopus populations earlier in the year, delighting some fishers that were able to profit from the boom, but harming others that make a living from shellfish, the newswire said. “The tentacled molluscs are notoriously voracious eaters, hoovering up crustaceans such as crabs and shellfish,” the article explained, adding that many UK crab potters found their traps empty when octopus numbers increased.
JAGUARS RETURN: Jaguar numbers in Mexico have risen by 30% over the past 15 years following a “conservation drive”, the Guardian reported. Based on a census carried out with 920 motion-capture cameras across 414,000 hectares, researchers estimated that there are now 5,326 jaguars in Mexico, the newspaper said. A local expert listed three main reasons for the uptick: “Maintaining natural protected areas where jaguars can roam freely, reducing the conflict between cattle ranchers and jaguars and a publicity campaign that has put the jaguar on the map.”
LEGAL EFFORTS: Four residents of the Indonesian island of Pari are seeking damages from the world’s largest cement producer, the Swiss company Holcim, due to the impact of climate change on their lives, Reuters reported. A hearing was held in the Swiss city of Zug on 3 September, but ended with no decision, according to the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights. Elsewhere, Climate Home News reported on how farmers in Zambia are threatening to sue a Chinese copper company following a “massive toxic spill”.
Spotlight
Grains of truth
This week, Cropped talks to the authors of a new graphic novel about food sovereignty and resilient rice cultures in India’s eastern Indigenous heartlands.
The eastern Indian state of Jharkhand is better known for its rich coal reserves than for its grain.
Unlike India’s breadbasket in the north-west, less than 10% of Jharkhand’s cultivated land is irrigated, making its rainfed paddy highly reliant on a changing Indian monsoon.
In 2022, the state received its lowest rainfall in 121 years.
‘Plastic’ rice
The previous year, many of Jharkhand’s Indigenous villages were among the first to taste the outcome of a new Indian government strategy to combat malnutrition and anaemia: fortified rice.
Essentially, “fortification” involves mixing broken rice kernels and rice powder with nutrients, such as iron and vitamin B12. After being passed through an extrusion machine, these new “grains” are then mixed with regular rice that is distributed to India’s poor under India’s National Food Security Act, the world’s largest and most far-reaching food safety scheme.
According to a three-part investigation by journalist Anumeha Yadav in the Wire, Jharkhand’s Indigenous rice-growing communities were not convinced of the new grain’s benefits, dubbing it “plastic rice” and questioning its effects on their health.
The Indian government attributed farmers’ reactions to a “lack of awareness” and has since expanded the programme.
Yadav’s reportage led to the publication of a new graphic novel, Our Rice Tastes of Spring, illustrated by Bangalore-based studio Spitting Image.
Yadav told Carbon Brief she wrote the novel to document diverse food cultures and as a response to “tech fixes” being promoted to address climate change and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
According to Yadav, there’s widespread consensus that farming methods ushered in by the Green Revolution have made diets cereal-heavy and depleted India’s soils, meaning the “food we’re eating is much, much worse than what even our parents ate”.
At the same time, the industrial agricultural industry – and even some NGOs – are pushing a “tech fix” aimed at India’s poor that “makes money for themselves”, she added.
Drawn from real life
Lead illustrator Sandhya Visvanathan told Carbon Brief she combined Yadav’s photographs – of “life and people as they are” on Jharkhand’s Netarhat plateau – with “painterly” drawings of daily life in a community “whose lives are intertwined with the land”.
While the plot is set in a fictional Indigenous village, the conversations, rituals and rice varieties the book depicts are very real.
For instance, Ranikajal rice grows longer stems as floodwaters rise and iron-rich red Agni-sal grain has stems known to resist even cyclones.
Anumeha warns that many of these varieties – and the creative, traditional knowledge systems associated with them – are at risk of being lost forever, as India promotes and procures input-intensive white rice.
She concluded:
“Many people looked at the images and said: ‘Hey, that seed used to grow here.’ But there’s also a question of dignity and agency here: even farmers know there is corporate interest involved in these saviour[-like] solutions. Someone actually said that to me: ‘The market is not the only principle in our life.’”
Watch, read, listen
SECTS, SOYA AND CATTLE: A new documentary by the Gecko Project investigated the key drivers behind the worst fires on record in Bolivia’s Chiquitano forest.
DURIAN DURIAN: The New York Times profiled “self-described fanatics” of the “odoriferous” durian fruit, who gathered in Puerto Rico to sample durian in a “judgment-free zone”.
SAVING THE ‘FATTEST PARROT’: The Guardian reported on efforts to protect New Zealand’s kakapos, the “world’s fattest parrot”, by vaccinating them against bird flu.
BEGIN AGAIN: A Financial Times column explored how “why veganism lost” out to “influencers and gym bros” pushing protein and how it could regain momentum in the public.
New science
- Human impacts on global marine ecosystems are expected to more than double by the mid-century | Science
- Deforestation accounted for about three-quarters of the reduction in rainfall and surface temperature increase recorded during the dry season in the Brazilian Amazon over the past 35 years | Nature Communications
- Nearly 40% of the world’s transboundary river basins could see conflicts arising from water scarcity in 2041-50, although these conflicts could be mitigated by “proactive measures” | Nature Communications
In the diary
- 18 September: Earthed Summit 2025: Generation Restoration | London
- 19 September: Call for evidence on EU fertiliser product regulation | Online
- 21-28 September: New York Climate Week | New York City
- 24 September: UN General Assembly high-level week climate summit | New York City
- 29 September-1 October: FAO global conference on sustainable livestock transformation | Rome
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 10 September 2025: Flooded ‘food baskets’; Brazil eyes forest finance; Resilient rice appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 10 September 2025: Flooded ‘food baskets’; Brazil eyes forest finance; Resilient rice
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.
The post AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China appeared first on Carbon Brief.
AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?
AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China
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