Published

2 years ago

January 17, 2024

Alice Rush

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s Cropped.
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

Drought around the world

GLOBAL DROUGHT: Drought affected 1.84 billion people in 2022 and 2023 – nearly one-quarter of all people on Earth – “the vast majority” of whom live in low- and middle-income countries, the New York Times wrote. The figures come from the UN’s “Global Drought Snapshot” report. The New York Times explained that the droughts “come at a time of record-high global temperatures and rising food-price inflation”, with conflicts such as Ukraine “punishing the world’s poorest people”. The outlet said: “Some of the current abnormally dry, hot conditions are made worse by the burning of fossil fuels that cause climate change.” It added that the onset of El Niño last year “has also very likely contributed” to the heat and drought.

SHIP-SHAPE: Drought is also impacting the flow of global shipping, as “critical shipping delays” have plagued the Panama Canal, Bloomberg reported. The canal handles around $270bn of global trade each year – about 5% of total commerce. “Potential solutions”, the outlet wrote, “include an artificial lake to pump water into the canal and cloud seeding to boost rainfall”. But, it added, it is unclear if either option is feasible – and neither would be able to be implemented quickly. Moller-Maersk, the Danish shipping giant, has announced that it will “turn to rail to move some cargo”, according to Reuters. The newswire added that the Panama Canal Authority is “developing short- and long-term solutions to limit climate anomalies’ impact on the trade route”.

LOOKING FORWARD: The Global Drought Monitor Consortium released its 2023 summary report, which found that the record heat experienced last year “affected the water cycle in various ways”, including by exacerbating drought conditions. Looking forward, the report said, “the greatest risk of developing or intensifying drought” over the next year is in much of central and South America, southern Africa and western Australia. According to the Global Drought Monitor, global precipitation was “close to average” last year, with no clear trend. But, it added, “the number of record low monthly precipitation totals was the highest on the record”. For more on last year’s record heat, see Carbon Brief’s 2023 state of the climate analysis, published last week.

New year, new species

RIGHT ON KEW: From Antarctic rocks to the top of a volcano, scientists at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, discovered 74 new species of plants and fungi in 2023, BBC News reported. Of these, “at least one will probably already have been lost”, the story said. Scientists are calling for the immediate protection of new discoveries that include species of Antarctic fungi and a pair of trees living almost entirely underground in highland Angola. Nevertheless, senior research leader at Kew, Dr Martin Cheek, told BBC News: “The sheer sense of wonder when you realise that you’ve found a species that is totally unknown to the rest of the world’s scientists and, in fact, everyone else on the planet, in many cases, is what makes life worth living.”

ANIMAL INVENTORY: Separately, the Zoological Survey of India declared that 664 new animal species were discovered in 2022, according to a story by Mid-day profiling the wildlife researchers behind these finds. “It is both hopeful and intriguing to know that there is something new in a particular patch of forest…but it is tough not to be worried by changes,” said University of Arkansas researcher Shantanu Joshi, who discovered a rare dragonfly species and gave a local family credit as co-authors of his research. Citizens and communities aiding these discoveries are “a contrast to the grim reality” of having to witness “radical and swift destruction of habitats” first-hand, the story added. But they face “systemic challenges”, including the lack of funding and opportunities and the state of documentation and inventorying in India, the story said.

DEEP-SEA DISCOVERY: Meanwhile, New Scientist reported that four new species of deep-sea octopus were discovered at depths of 3km near hydrothermal vents off the coast of Costa Rica. “It’s like walking in a forest you’ve never been in before, with a flashlight, trying to find a hot spring,” said expedition co-leader Dr Beth Orcutt from the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. Separately, the “largest ever study of ocean DNA” revealed fungi species in the ocean’s “twilight zone” that could yield “new drugs that may match the power of penicillin”, the Guardian reported. And a feature in Hakai Magazine looked at how quickly animals can evolve to adapt to a rapidly changing climate. For Prof Luciano Beheregaray, a molecular ecologist at Flinders University, “hybridisation” is key. He told Hakai: “We could manage populations at risk by actively bringing in genetic material that might help them adapt…It would be better than to sit and watch extinction take place before our eyes.”

Spotlight

Deep-sea disquiet

In this spotlight, Carbon Brief unpacks Norway’s recent decision to allow exploratory seabed mining in its national waters and explains what the next year holds for deep-sea mining approvals.

In December, Norway made headlines around the world as its centre-left minority government struck a deal with two conservative parties to allow companies to explore the seabed of the Arctic Ocean for critical minerals, as covered in Cropped at the time. Last week, the Storting – the Norwegian parliament – officially passed the measure, “against massive criticism from scientists, fisheries organisations and the international community”, EU Reporter wrote.

Seabed mining can involve “hoovering” up rocks called “polymetallic nodules” from the seafloor. These rocks contain metals including manganese, cobalt and nickel, many of which are critical for batteries and other technologies. However, it can also look more like land-based mining – which is “more invasive”, according to Wired.

There are a “huge number of unknowns” associated with seabed mining, Prof David Schoeman, a quantitative ecologist at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, told Carbon Brief last year.

In part, that is because deep-sea habitats are “poorly understood, diverse, fragile and extremely slow to recover from disturbance”, Pepe Clarke, global oceans practice lead at WWF-International, told Carbon Brief. In addition, research previously covered by Carbon Brief has found that seabed mining could negatively impact other important industries, such as fisheries.

At present, the governmental approval covers only exploration for critical minerals, not exploitation of such resources. But, Clarke said: “You don’t explore unless you’re looking for something.”

“Many states view Norway as a sustainable manager of its ocean areas, so what Norway practises and allows in terms of ocean industry is important,” Ida Soltvedt Hvinden of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute told Wired. But it does not directly affect the ongoing negotiations at the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which governs the use of the seafloor in areas beyond any national waters. Twenty-four countries, including the UK, are currently calling for a moratorium on seabed exploration until the risks of environmental harm can be better understood.

There are, essentially, two ways that such a moratorium could come into effect. It could be adopted at the ISA through a formal process. Or, a de facto moratorium could take hold if “a sufficiently large bloc of countries at the ISA committed to withholding support for future mining approvals”, Clarke explained.

Discussions around a seabed exploration moratorium will continue at the ISA this year, with the council scheduled to meet twice and the assembly convening at the end of July. However, Clarke said, it is “unlikely” that the issue will be resolved in the coming year. According to BBC News, a final vote at the ISA is “expected within 24 months”.

News and views

MIXED SIGNALS: Reuters reported that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest halved in 2023 compared to 2022, hitting its lowest levels since 2018. The newswire called it “a major win for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in his first year in office”. But, it pointed out, the area cleared last year is still “six times the size of New York City” – underscoring challenges in Lula’s pledge to end illegal deforestation by 2030. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that deforestation in the Cerrado savannah in eastern Brazil rose by 43% in the same time period, with campaigners calling it a “major stain” on Lula’s environmental credentials. Speaking to the FT, André Guimarães of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute said: “Unlike the Amazon, where prevention can be done via law enforcement, in the Cerrado, incentives have to be created for landowners to give up their right to deforest.”

POLAR PATHOGENS: Alaska state officials confirmed that a polar bear found dead in October was killed by the “highly pathogenic avian influenza that is circulating among animal populations around the world”, the Alaska Beacon reported. The state veterinarian said that the death was the first-ever such report in a polar bear anywhere in the world. The outlet added that the death “is a sign of the unusually persistent and lethal hold that this strain” has on wild animal populations. At the other end of the world, the first bird flu deaths in elephant and fur seals were confirmed on South Georgia Island, a UK territory in the sub-Antarctic. “Hundreds of elephant seals were found dead” on the island, the Guardian reported, adding that there “have also been increased deaths of fur seals, kelp gulls and brown skua at several other sites”.

OVERSATURATED: Important crop-growing areas of England were hit by “widespread flooding”, leading to “concerns about shortages of carrots and other root vegetables”, according to the Times. “Prolonged rain” during Storm Henk earlier this month resulted in sustained flooding. The newspaper wrote that “saturated ground is a problem for growers because as long as the crop is in the ground, there’s greater risk of it rotting”. Prof Hannah Cloke, a hydrologist at the University of Reading, pointed out that the floods compounded issues brought on by a “very wet autumn”. She told the outlet: “October’s Storm Babet is already likely to have caused big impacts on potato and cereal crops and damaged this year’s harvest.”

SEED CHANGE: After two consecutive years of heatwaves and other extreme weather taking a toll on yields from India’s wheat bowl, government surveys showed that 80% of the “wheat area this year has been sown with climate-resilient and bio-fortified varieties,” the Hindustan Times reported. The 2022 heatwave reduced India’s wheat yield by 4.5% “compared to a year with normal weather”, according to a study by the University of British Columbia quoted in the story. Separately, Mongabay reported on the combined impact of air pollution and climate change on India’s food security. And Context News reported that while past election manifestos have made only “passing references” to climate impacts on farmers, “crop-threatening erratic monsoon rains and heatwaves could make headlines as campaigning starts” in India’s big general election in April.

SNOWLESS SLOPES: Gulmarg, a skiing town in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, witnessed a lack of snow on its ski slopes “due to unseasonably dry weather”, CNN reported, despite being one of the world’s highest ski resorts. The region saw an “80% rain deficit” in December, the Associated Press reported, with daytime temperatures “sometimes at least 6C higher than the norm”. The head of the India Meteorological Department’s Kashmir office, Mukhtar Ahmed, told the newswire that in the last few years, “winter has shortened due to global warming”. This has affected hydropower generation, tourism and agriculture, the article reported, forcing “distressed” farmers to change the crops they plant. Ahmed added that “timely snowfall is crucial to recharge the region’s thousands of glaciers” that sustain agriculture and horticulture. Scientists told the Third Pole that snowless winters and more extreme summer rain could become the norm.

GAZA FAMINE: “Pockets of famine” already exist in Gaza according to UN aid officials, the Guardian reported, with parents sacrificing food for their kids, cooking fuel “almost impossible to find” and 25 kilo sacks of flour now six times their pre-war price. However, lack of data on child malnutrition and mortality meant formal criteria for declaring a famine had not been met, the story said. In a joint statement, the World Health Organisation, World Food Programme and UNICEF said new aid routes must be opened to Gaza, more trucks must be allowed in and aid workers must be protected. According to doctors in Gaza, children “weakened by lack of food had died from hypothermia” and babies born to undernourished mothers “had not survived for more than a few days”.

Watch, read, listen

TRACKED CHANGES: In a news feature, Nature examined how scientists are using gene-editing to domesticate wild plants and concerns around the exploitation of Indigenous and traditional knowledge.

GRISLY NEWS: Are US authorities attributing wildlife declines to predators and overlooking climate impacts on biodiversity? A long-read in Grist unpacked how this has played out in Alaska.

NUTS ABOUT CHESTNUTS: In the Atlantic, staff writer Katherine J Wu explored the downfall of the American chestnut tree and scientists’ attempts to restore the species to its native range.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?: An article in Atmos argued that the way humans talk about nature shapes their relationship to it – and asked whether “we [should] be paying more attention to the words we use?”.

New science

Severe 21st-century ocean acidification in Antarctic marine protected areas

Nature Communications

A new study found that even under intermediate warming over the next century, proposed and existing marine protected areas in the Antarctic will experience “severe” ocean acidification. Using a high-resolution model of the ocean, sea ice and biogeochemistry, researchers projected future ocean acidification under four emissions scenarios. They found that pH in the upper 200 metres of the ocean may decline by up to 0.36, and that these declines will be most severe in coastal areas, where organisms are most sensitive to acidification. The researchers “call for strong emission-mitigation efforts and further management strategies to reduce pressures on ecosystems”.

Consistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities

Nature

Around 1,050 species make up half of the Earth’s 800bn tropical trees, according to new research. The study, with 357 authors, investigated patterns of abundance of common tree species using inventory data for more than one million trees in old-growth tropical forests across Africa, Amazonia, and south-east Asia. The authors found that despite different histories, there were consistent patterns in common tree species across all continents, suggesting that the “fundamental mechanisms of tree community assembly may apply to all tropical forests”. While their findings “should not detract” from the focus on rare and endemic species, the researchers conclude that it “open[s] new opportunities to understand the world’s most diverse forests”.

Living in harmony with nature is achievable only as a non-ideal vision

Environmental Science & Policy

A new study found that “a dynamic relationship with nature is a constitutional right” for citizens of only four out of 193 countries with constitutions in force: Ecuador, Bolivia, the Philippines and São Tomé and Príncipe. The authors reviewed national constitutions and environmental and biodiversity policies to understand whether they aligned with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s vision of “a world living in harmony with nature by 2050”. They argued that while such harmony “has little scope for translation into rational or achievable policy”, it is consistent with legislation that has been increasingly recognising the rights of nature. They concluded by calling on politicians to “shift Earth-centred governance from an aspirational party-political issue to a foundational principle through constitutional reforms with policy implications”.

In the diary

16-19 January: 60th Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change | Istanbul, Turkey
23 January: UN Convention on Biological Diversity first meeting of the informal advisory group on benefit-sharing from the use of digital sequence information on genetic resources | Online
28 January: Finland presidential election
2 February: World wetlands day

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 17 January 2024: Norway’s deep-sea disquiet; Panama drought; New species discovered appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 17 January 2024: Norway’s deep-sea disquiet; Panama drought; New species discovered

Climate Change

DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids

Published

11 hours ago

May 29, 2026

Alice Rush

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

Map of the UK showing that at least 67 NHS sites have been forced to close due to weather-related flooding since 2021

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.

DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids

Climate Change

Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?

Published

11 hours ago

May 29, 2026

Alice Rush

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).

Apr 30, 2026

Clean Energy Frontier

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Restricting raw materials exports is well-intentioned but without other policies to foster domestic processing, they can backfire

Read more
Feb 4, 2026

Energy

Africa records fastest-ever solar growth, as installations jump in 2025

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Read more

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.

Campaigners in Africa are demanding their governments stop the development of fossil fuels on the continent and embrace the opportunities of renewable energy
(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?

Climate Change

AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China

Published

12 hours ago

May 29, 2026

Alice Rush

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.

Annual investment in fossil-fuel power in China and the US, $bn. The figure for 2026 is an IEA estimate, based on current trends. Source: IEA.

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.

Total value of new gas generation final investment decisions by country, region or use-case, between 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, $bn. Source: IEA.

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.